AI Set to Change Water Plant Operations

In the water industry, digital solutions have always been quite advanced when it comes to the distribution and collection networks. With the deployment of advanced metering infrastructures, acoustic loggers, satellite and drone leak detection, remote pressure monitoring... But at a plant level, digital was always quite limited to Programable Logic Controls or PLC and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems or SCADA. But that started to change a few years ago as the pressure put on water utilities became higher. The purpose of the water utility remains the same: Provide safe and reliable access to water, and avoid releasing polluted water back to nature. Although this concept has persisted, context has changed, and each new year brings tougher and stricter regulations for water utilities. We've seen it with Ofwat in the UK and their fines to utilities for wastewater overflows. As a response to this change in context, plant managers and utilities are turning to digital and on many occasions to AI solutions to face the challenge. Artificial intelligence is at the heart of the GreenUp strategic plan to decarbonize, depollute and regenerate resources. For example, analyzing large amounts of data, detecting anomalies, and also predicting key insight that will help them to monitor the quality of water, and also to reduce the environmental and water footprint. To reach the compliance, transparency, efficiency and resiliency goals that come with the pressure of context changes, Veolia’s Water Tech Zone developed Hubgrade with components like the Hubgrade Wastewater Plant Performance, a digital solution that acts sort of like a 2D digital twin in which data from the plant is gathered and analyzed with the AI algorithm to determine ideal setpoints and understand how the plant should be operating to save resources while respecting regulations. For example, adapting wastewater treatment depending on electricity prices and demand to save on the plant's electricity bill. By dynamically controlling processes thanks to AI tools, water utilities can save time and money, as well as reduce their environmental footprint. So generally, by using our digital twin to promote operational excellence at plants, drive operational expenditure savings, you can see results that go upwards 30% of the overall OPEX thanks to Hubgrade or even upwards 100% of the hydraulic capacity of the plant, 20 to 30% more load, i.e. wastewater through your plant. That helps protect the environment. And by using an Hubgrade on this, I'll give you an example of a customer in Denmark. It's a city south of Copenhagen that's called Køge. They have a medium sized normal, wastewater treatment plan, where we've installed our Hubgrade solution. The driver here was really increase hydraulic capacity, maintain compliance, and reduce environmental footprint, which we managed to do by 90% at this customer. Although utilities already had the knowledge, AI has enabled a much faster reaction. Tasks that would have taken them weeks to develop now take hours thanks to the technology's capability of analyzing large data sets very quickly. And this quick analysis allows them to start saving resources earlier. This leads them to see ROIs and results much faster, as they can use fewer chemicals and energy in the plant or expand their infrastructure’s lifecycle. ROI can be quite significant considering that energy can be between 20 to 40% of a plant’s operational expenses and chemicals between 5% and 15%. One is in the Netherlands. It's the plan is in Ede. And here it's simply the return on investment is extremely quick because it spared them the construction of an entire line extra on the plant. So we're talking millions of euros of investment in comparison to what it takes to implement a digital system. So here we're, let's say, way below a year. On other plants, let's say in the UK, for example, where we have a bunch of different customers, here their driver is very much on making sure that there are no overflows, protecting the recipients and also reducing their OPEX. Here you're probably looking at something between 12 to 24 months as a return on investment, thanks to the savings on electricity and on chemicals that we can generate through this optimized operations with the AI models from Hubgrade. This change in context, along with the use of technologies like AI to adapt to it faster and more efficiently, is leading to a change in the industry. Plant infrastructure, chemical and machinery vendors are leveraging on digital solutions to differentiate themselves from competition, enhance their sales, or even boost their operations. But it's a case of adapt or die, as utilities have no choice but to adhere to regulations. So the market needs to follow them too, which generates opportunities. We're seeing new players, purely digital players like Purecontrol entering the market. The number of entrants in the market, start ups from anywhere in the industry or from universities are starting to spur. A lot of companies are putting a lot of money on this and betting. So even non water related companies are entering this market and we ourselves can see that we speeded up our growth significantly since the use of AI. And now probably even the race is going to go even quicker with genAI. AI has opened the door for new players to enter the smart water industry, so the market is set to grow with different and new offers, which is most likely going to push the industry to develop faster and modernize, as well as change the way plants have traditionally operated. With a market size of more than $300 billion, the industry is bound to see players compete for a piece of it.