VA SYD is one of Sweden’s largest utilities, which supplies more than 546,000 customers with drinking water in the regions around Lund and Malmö in the south of Sweden. They sought reduce the 10% of wasted water due to leaks to less than 8%. This contributes to VA SYD’s ambitious goal of becoming a climate-neutral, energy-positive water utility by 2030.
THE CHALLENGE
Simon Granath and Victor Pelin work as development engineers at VA SYD and have been responsible for the design and implementation of the leakage detection system. Pinpointing leaks is a complex task. “Until very recently, we could detect only the largest leaks that led to service disruptions. In fact, it is the smaller, slower leaks, often from small service pipes, that are responsible for the lion’s share of non-revenue water,” Simon Granath points out.
Another aspect is improving service to customers. “We have to maintain a lot of pipelines in a large area, and we wanted to improve our ability to pinpoint leaks through smart metering zones. We had to find a way of using the AI-based leakage detection in an on-premises set-up instead of a cloud environment.”
THE SOLUTION
VA SYD implemented the Siemens SIWA LeakPlus solution, which uses an AI-based algorithm to identify and classify anamolies in the pipe network. The first step was to refine the hydraulic models for the pipelines and link the data from the metering systems and pump stations. Victor Pelin explains: “We used the system to simulate different leaks and then evaluated the data. We were able to detect leaks as small as 0.5 liters per second – a huge improvement over the previous solution, which provided no means of detecting small leaks at all.”
RESULTS
With the proof of concept in its final stages, VA SYD is working on scaling up the solution to other parts of the network such as the town of Lund, where VA SYD is currently installing additional flowmeters to provide more data from the pipeline network. “A smarter leakage detection system requires less data from the pipelines, so we can reduce the number of installed meters. This immediately pays off,” Simon Granath is convinced.
Key Figures
- 5,000 km of water pipelines in operation
- 0.2 – 0.5 l/sec leaking water detection possible
- < 8% water loss as short-term goal (from 10 %)
- 0% unplanned service interruptions as long-term goal
– Simon Granath, Development Engineer, VA SYDWe want to be able to measure up to the best. That requires AI-based solutions like SIWA LeakPlus.
