Lillehammer Municipality stops water leaks on the drinking water network faster with Guard Cloud

”The new system from Guard Automation helps us detect leaks earlier, and not least narrow down the leak search,” says Knut Andreas Myklebust-Vårvang.

He is an operations engineer and heads the zone water work in the department for pipeline networks in Lillehammer Municipality. The responsibility includes, among other things, the operation and maintenance of the pipelines supplying the municipality with clean water.

260 kilometres of water pipes

”The drinking water network is enormous. We are talking about 260 kilometres of pipelines, which is equivalent to the distance between Lillehammer and Trondheim as the crow flies.”

Myklebust-Vårvang explains that the municipality has worked for a long time to detect and repair leaks. From 2013 to 2022, the municipality reduced water consumption from 18,000-19,000 cubic metres per day to somewhere between 8,000-9,000 cubic metres per day. Until now the municipality has primarily used microphones to listen for leaks, but realised that several faults are only detected with new measuring instruments and a system to collect the data.

”It could take weeks and months from when we received indications that something was wrong until we actually managed to identify the leak. The challenge was precisely the size of the pipeline network. It was like finding a needle in a haystack.”

Stopping leaks faster

In the autumn of 2022, the municipality received assistance from Guard Automation, a Norwegian company specialising in automation and system integration. 15 new electromagnetic water meters were installed on the pipeline network in the municipality. This has made it possible to divide up the haystack, making it easier and faster to detect and repair leaks.

”We have already identified three water leaks with the new system, two have been fixed and one is currently being repaired. This shows that the system works,” says Myklebust-Vårvang.

The new battery-powered meters register the amount of water flowing through a given pipe every 15 minutes. The data travels up from the ground and is sent to the cloud service Guard Cloud, which compiles and presents the insights to the operations manager and his team.

Leaks are a major problem in Norway

Division Manager at Sandefjord-based Guard Automation, Jon Egil Ek, explains that the company assists nearly 40 per cent of Norwegian municipalities with systems related to critical infrastructure. The company is noticing an increasing interest in water loss analysis.

”More and more municipalities are prioritising this, but there are still many that lack the equipment and systems to make leak searches accurate. The key is to connect the right measuring equipment to a platform that can retrieve data from many sources, and present the insights in a way that makes it easier for the municipality to both detect and repair leaks faster.”

The operations engineer in Lillehammer Municipality supports this:

”Through the cloud solution Guard Cloud we see how much water is flowing through the pipes. If an abnormally large amount of water flows through a pipe at night, when consumption is lowest, it is a sign of a leak. We can also set up alarms and receive notifications indicating errors. The system is checked every day and is now an important tool in our work,” says Myklebust-Vårvang.

Huge potential for improvement

Lillehammer Municipality produces nearly 4 million cubic metres of clean drinking water per year. Despite targeted efforts over time, a lot of water is still wasted.

”In Norway we waste tremendous amounts of clean drinking water. Here in Lillehammer we are talking about a loss of 20-30 per cent of all the water we produce,” says the operations engineer.

Myklebust-Vårvang has good knowledge of how leak detection is carried out in Norway today. Among other things, he sits on the board and technical groups of the trade association Rørinspeksjon Norge.

”Much of the lost water ends up in the sewer and must be treated again. This is highly resource-intensive. The potential for improvement is formidable, and the benefits are great from both an economic and environmental perspective,” says Myklebust-Vårvang.

He estimates that water loss in Denmark is 7-8 per cent and believes standards should be introduced to ensure better monitoring of the water supply network.

”Many municipalities do not even work on this issue, and when it costs about 25 kroner to produce a cubic metre of clean drinking water, it goes without saying that there is a lot of money to be saved.”

The operations engineer says that the municipality has two full-time employees working to identify leaks on the pipeline network, which consists of both new and old pipes, the oldest of which are over 100 years old.

”In the future we will install another 15 new meters on the water supply network, and we are considering the possibility of using the same methodology in our work with flood preparedness. The benefits associated with data collection are huge, and we look forward to continuing our cooperation with Guard in this work,” concludes Myklebust-Vårvang.