Sydney Water is Australia’s largest water utility and is responsible for the management of over 26,000 kilometers of network pipes that collects over 1.5 billion litres of wastewater each day.
THE CHALLENGE
Due to the sheer scale of network infrastructure that Sydney Water manages, sewerage service interruptions can occur hundreds of times over a year period in the form of mains breaks and blockages, resulting in overflows.
Previously no automated method of identifying these overflows existed, with the water utility relying on members of the community to alert them of the incident. The delayed identification and rectification of the sewage overflow often resulted in a risk to public and environmental health, wasted time and resources for the water utility, and the risk of hefty EPA fines.
THE SOLUTION
The Captis solution was implemented by Sydney Water to proactively manage sewage overflows through localised monitoring of sewer risers, introducing the ability to identify issues before an overflow can occur.
A fleet of 8,000+ Captis devices (including Captis Pulse Lite EA and Captis Multi) were deployed to the sewer network and were configured to log and send data daily, in addition to immediate alerts on high level sewer events. The Captis on-board alarm processing allows for configurable signal debounce to prevent false triggers as well as immediate transmission on events. Additionally, the broken wire input is utilised to detect disconnection or damage of the float switch high-level sensor.
The sensors detect about 20 blockages in the gravity wastewater network per month on average, saving approximately $400,000 in incident costs.
RESULTS
Following the implementation of the Captis solution, the end-user has gained real-time data to assist in the identification of potential sewer overflows, allowing for the proactive resolution of network issues.
This has resulted in over 370 potential blockages detected and acted on before an overflow eventuated, which saves millions of kiloliters of water loss and the cost to both Sydney Water and the environment as a result.
With the Captis devices everyday operations are optimised with:
- Less network interruptions
- Significant reduction in sewer overflows
- Reduced risk to public and environmental health
- Improved compliance to EPA regulations.
Sydney Water is now scaling to monitor their full fleet with an additional 15,000 Captis devices being deployed.
