In 2011, the water utility TREFOR Vand carried out an analysis of its water loss to address its high NRW issue.
Afterwards, an action plan for 2012-2014 was developed using the IWA methodology.
The action plan included implementation of KeyZones, pressure management, active leakage detection and optimisation of operation procedures. All mechanical meters have been replaced with smart meters and data from more than 47,000 meters is collected and processed daily. The smart meter data is included in the utility’s systems to optimise its day-to-day operations. Substantial efforts and investments have been put into establishing district metering zones in the entire supply area as well as replacing old cast iron and asbestos cement pipes with PE pipes. The operation system KeyZones gathers all data relevant to water loss and provides an IWA water balance, performance indicators, GIS charts and graphs on district metering zone level.
The smart meter data is particularly utilised to provide more accurate overview of daily NRW levels in the established district metering zones. In 2014, TREFOR Vand successfully achieved its objective and to this day, the NRW level remains well below 10%.