As the UK enjoys another week of freezing winter temperatures, Sydney Australia enjoys (or suffers) a heatwave. news.com.au called it a “summer of sweat”. Sydney has just experienced the hottest January on record with temperatures above 40C.
The Guardian reports that demand for water reached 2.2bn litres, a 14 year high. Residents have been asked to moderate their use of open tap demand when watering their gardens or washing their vehicles, notwithstanding the fact that Sydney’s dams are at 87%. But they have also been urged to drink plenty of water.
These might be good circumstances in which open tap demand could be reduced by lowering network pressure rather than prevailing on customers to use less water at a time when quite naturally they want to use more – to drink, shower, etc. i2O’s oNet solution gives water utilities control over the network and allows it to operate automatically to pre-set operating criteria, or to a utility specified control philosophy, or a calendarised combination of the two.
The increasing number of extreme weather events means more frequent changes to operating philosophy are required. There was a time when one could be set and it would hold good for years before it required review. No longer.
More extreme weather events is one of six big challenges that i2O’s clients have to deal with, alongside increasing population size and urbanisation, ageing network infrastructure, an ageing workforce, customers becoming more demanding, and difficulty in increasing revenue or accessing capital.
