WD News: Vitens, the largest drinking water company in the Netherlands, has successfully realised energy savings on its critical pumps using SAM4 Energy in a proof-of-value pilot. This demonstrated how the energy-efficiency of existing equipment can be significantly increased using smart analytics. The achieved results contribute to Vitens’ commitment to securing a robust and sustainable drinking water supply by 2030, which is reflected in its ‘Every Drop Sustainable’ strategy.
To achieve its 2030 goal, Vitens has an overarching innovation program (SLIMM) that incorporates new data solutions to improve operational performance and resilience of its industrial equipment. For that reason, Vitens invests in an array of in-house innovations in addition to a select number of external solutions that can integrate seamlessly into its operating environment. As part of this program, Samotics was selected to undertake a proof-of-value pilot with Vitens to demonstrate how energy efficiency analytics can be utilised to achieve pump energy-efficiency.
Samotics’ SAM4 Energy system was used to continuously monitor all of the industrial pumps at a drinking water production and distribution facility, analysing their performance and identifying where electricity consumption, cost and efficiency losses were largest and why. By performing this pilot, the efficiency of a Vitens pump station was improved by more than 7% with an associated reduction in energy consumption, costs and equivalent emissions and whilst meeting the same levels of demand. This was achieved by implementing a couple of simple changes to operational settings, based on the recommendations generated by the SAM4 Energy system, meaning that no additional investment was needed by Vitens to improve efficiency of the industrial equipment.
Rein Wuestman, Process Engineer of the Water Expertise Centre at Vitens said, “Digitising and automating water network management processes is critical to this approach.”
Jasper Hoogeweegen, CEO of Samotics said, “Pumps account for the vast majority of electricity consumption in the water industry. That’s why, Samotics is helping Vitens by providing simple and automated actionable insights that boost efficiency and reduce energy waste of their pumps.”
Following the success of the pilot in improving the performance and energy-efficiency of critical pumps and integrating with existing data systems, Vitens is scaling the number of assets monitored by SAM4 Energy.
Source: Samotics
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