Acqua Novara Drives Digital And Sustainable Innovation Through Partnership With Schneider Electric

• Acqua Novara improves efficiency with remote control and automation across its entire network
• Digital data collection used to communicate and certify information that impacts sustainability and adapt to the regulatory requests of the ARERA sector authority

Acqua Novara manages the integrated water service in 140 municipalities in the provinces of Novara and Verbania-Cusio-Ossola, Italy: an area inhabited by a population of 450,000 inhabitants, whose average annual consumption is around 38 million cubic meters of water.

The utility first opened in 2006 from the subsequent aggregation of 23 different entities (consortia, municipal) and has focused from the beginning on the renewal of technologies in order to increase the efficiency of the service - introducing more water into the network but with lower consumption energy and reducing losses. This is a difficult task in an area with highly diversified water supply sources that is increasingly stressed by the water crisis.

The relationship with Schneider Electric is now ten years old and began when Acqua Novara started the project to create a remote control system across the entire network, to centrally manage monitoring activities and direct field activities in an effective, efficient and timely manner. To achieve the result, Acqua Novara chose to adopt a Schneider Electric SCADA solution accompanied by a revamping of its system which to date has allowed 900 critical points of the network out of a total of 1,100 to be integrated into the remote control system.

Choices ahead of their time
Acqua Novara spearheaded this development in the industry by equipping itself with a tool that made it possible to homogenize and standardize the systems present in the network, which supported the growth of activities over time and made it possible to collect data and drive data-informed decision-making.

The utility found itself at an advantage in responding to what have now become needs imposed by the sector authority, ARERA, and also to the evolution of the European regulatory and financing scenario. The PNRR funds aimed at the renewal of critical infrastructures, the CFRD regulation for the reporting of ESG data, the evolution of the European taxonomy relating to sustainable finance are key factors in today's market, which require utilities in the water world to have digital systems of data collection and reporting and to be able to communicate and certify the data that impacts the sustainability aspect.

A path of sustainable innovation
More recently, given the progressive advancement of the revamping of the plants and the related integration of new data collection points in the SCADA, Acqua Novara has begun to consider how to transform the growing amount of data into useful information to innovate in a sustainable way also other aspects of its business.

Since 2020, the utility has also prioritised using remote control management to improve its efficiency at every level. This is not only in terms of operational efficiency - which has increased thanks to the ability to prevent and intervene in an informed and timely manner on any faults - but also in terms of collaboration and connection enabled by digital for better management of the workforce. This is achieved through digital functions for users (from smart metering to the availability of online branches), in order to accelerate social, environmental and economic benefits.

From an evolutionary perspective, Acqua Novara plans to address the issue of reducing water losses - which has remained somewhat in the background due to the need to first equip itself with the ability to detect information from the field in real-time; an activity in which Schneider Electric will be ready to support the customer through its Water Loss Management applications and the skills of its sector experts.

According to the CEO of Acqua Novara, Daniele Barbone, upskilling is the keyword for future developments. “The work of a utility like ours in a digital era requires the development of specialization on innovative tools, which cannot happen immediately” he commented. “In this decade we have taken important steps, however our business has already been enjoying for some time the advantages of the visibility that we have acquired thanks to the adoption of unified SCADA systems for remote control and real-time management.”