ABB and Wellington Water win smart water project award

After being nominated last month, ABB has announced that it won the 2023 Global Water Awards in the category “Smart Water Project of the Year” for its collaboration with Wellington Water, the water services provider for the Wellington region of New Zealand. The award was presented during the Global Water Summit in Berlin, Germany.

“If there’s a ‘Water Oscar’ out there, this is it, and we just won it. This is an incredible recognition,” said Amina Hamidi, Managing Director, ABB Instrumentation. “Innovation is at the core of everything we do, and the Global Water Summit is one of the most important gatherings within the international water industry. This award is a testament to the hard work and dedication that the ABB team demonstrates in helping the industry supply safe and healthy drinking water to communities around the globe.”

With the world’s population set to reach 10 billion by 2050, ensuring everyone has access to safe and clean water is a critical challenge. As scarcity concerns pile pressure on water operators, intelligent and accurate network monitoring has become a necessity.

Wellington Water manages the water infrastructure for six New Zealand councils. This infrastructure includes 105 water pump stations, 248 wastewater pump stations, 148 reservoirs and 27 stormwater pump stations at various sites.

“The award is a recognition of the very successful collaboration between Wellington Water and ABB,” said Paul Winstanley from Wellington Water. “We know very well that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. This is precisely why ABB’s solutions are so important to Wellington Water and our sprawling network of water pipes. With ABB’s technologies we can ensure that every drop of water is accounted for.”

Wellington Water worked closely with ABB to improve the resiliency of its drinking water infrastructure, implementing smart flow meters that track water flow in real time and variable frequency drives to deliver efficiency gains, with pumping occupying the lion’s share of the utility’s energy consumption.

At the same time, built-in verification tools and anomaly detection capabilities enable the operators to secure the longevity of their devices. Recorded data is easily exported for further analysis and evaluation so that critical factors can be identified earlier, and corrective actions are taken more quickly.