Northumbrian Water has been awarded £9.5m from an industry innovation fund for three projects that aim to improve the environment and boost customer service.
The company has won backing for three projects in the latest round of Ofwat Innovation Fund’s Water Breakthrough Challenge. It has now received financial support for 19 schemes over the last five years, the largest number of any single company in the Ƶ water industry.
The Smart Skies Healthy Waters scheme will see drones and robotics used alongside other technology to transform the monitoring of the region’s waterways. The scheme aims to deliver laboratory-grade analysis to help protect the inland and coastal waters.
A second project, Net Water PositiHyve, will recycle water left over from treated waste water to be reused at large industrial sites.
And the Stream 3 project builds on a previous initiative to create an open data platform to improve the industry’s performance when it comes to decision making.
Angela MacOscar, head of innovation at Northumbrian Water, said: “Securing these latest bids through the Ofwat Innovation Fund is testament to our commitment to use innovation and technology to look for changes to the way that we work for the benefit of our customers and the environment.
“By securing these funds we’re being given a big boost to carry out work that we wouldn’t normally be able to do, and this drives collaboration across the water industry which will even make a difference to all water company customers up and down the country.”
David Black, CEO of Ofwat said: “Water underpins our society and economy, and the water sector faces a range of challenges requiring urgent solutions.
“The Ofwat Innovation Fund was established five years ago to incentivise the water sector to collaborate with partners across industry, charities, and academia to accelerate the pace of transformation and create lasting benefits for customers and the environment.
“The level of ambition of this year’s winners is remarkable. We are supporting these projects to prove their impact so that they can be scaled, not only here in England and Wales, but exported around the world as a driver of economic growth.”
A total of 17 projects around the Ƶ have secured £40m worth of backing in the latest rounds of the Ofwat Innovation Fund.
Among the schemes is one in Yorkshire which will aim to turn sewage sludge into a source of hydrogen and low-carbon products.
