Iren, a company of primary importance among multi-utility companies, manages integrated water services in the provinces of Genoa, Savona, Imperia, la Spezia, Parma, Piacenza, Reggio Emilia, Aosta, Asti, Cuneo, Novara, Vercelli, Brescia, Mantua and Pavia; supplying drinkable water with more than 18,900 km of water networks, it is the third biggest operator in Italy in the water services sector in terms of the number of cubic metres managed.
Iren has reserved strategic importance to the management of the water network for over 20 years. Among the first companies in Italy to acquire mapping systems, in the 1990s it began the subdivision of the network into water districts for an improved and more widespread management of the entire cycle.
FAST has been cooperating with the Iren Group since the beginning of the 2000s with the study and supply of innovative and sustainable solutions which are able to generate value over time in the integrated management of water resources.
Iren’s requirement was to have an advanced measurement and diagnostic system able to provide information in real time regarding parameters of: pressure, capacity and level for every district with the aim of minimising water leaks and to optimise the performance of plant, increasing their efficiency and drastically reducing costs.
The cooperation with FAST has, therefore, been of fundamental importance for the accomplishment of this ambitious project which, thanks to the distribution in the territory of RTUs, AQUALOG PQs and AQUALOG MASTERs, has created an active management system in the network based on Pressure Management and the monitoring of leaks.
In this regard, for the management of the district network, Iren has applied the AQUAWORKS SCADA software that FAST has developed in cooperation with their leak search service. AQUAWORKS SCADA is entirely based on web technology, and therefore useable by an unlimited number of technicians and administrators.
Besides monitoring and the collection of data, an important application of the active control of pressures has been implemented using various methods such as regulation of the pressure of a critical point, guided regulation of user demand, regulation by time slots, and night/day regulation.
The road map of the project which today covers more than 800 districts, envisages bringing this number to over 1000 by 2020.
Another important step in the creation of an ever-more efficient network has been the implementation of a system aimed at the identification of water hammers thanks to AQUALOG PQ, the FAST device able to intercept and analyse these phenomena which are highly damaging for the network.
Also thanks to the application of these technologies, the Iren Group has achieved extraordinary results in the reduction of leaks, reaching an ILI level of 1.6, which implies a reduction in energy consumption, intervention times, breakages and service costs.
Development and sustainability are the values underpinning the cooperation of the Iren Group with FAST, a common vision aimed at development of the territory in terms of innovation and energy saving.