It was whilst connecting up with one Water Leader this past month that I gained some additional insight into our inter-connected (or not) things are and it really got me thinking about where the real opportunities lie for Water in the years ahead.
During the stormy period that led to some big challenges for Water companies, one of the biggest challenges, it seems, is the scenario of power outages leading to failures in treatment works, pumping stations and other assets. We all know that when these assets fail there can be major impacts such as pollutions in rivers and ‘no water’ to areas. Water companies are measured against their ability to avoid such scenarios and so what should we do?
“Is it the responsibility of the electricity provider OR the water provider OR both to deal with this situation?”
If we take a trip into the Electricity provider for a moment who have had the outage. As I understand it the typical measures are around outage times across customers BUT does this provide the means for necessary collaboration to drive a different solution between the 2 providers in relation to a bigger, interconnected problem?
A pollution impact as a result of a power outage may be felt by the water provider but not by the electricity provider.
And so, considering how we currently measure performance, that we aren’t the only provider in a given region and the principle that there are no boundaries only those that we perceive to be there…
Is there an opportunity to define better measures to support a more collaborative approach to solving these types of challenges?
If the answer is yes, we need the regulators to open their thinking too, in support of fostering more collaboration, not hindering it.