Thames Water selects Samotics as predictive maintenance partner
Samotics, a leading provider of smart industrial analytics to prevent unplanned downtime and energy waste, has been selected by Thames Water Utilities Limited as its sole supplier for electrical signature analysis (ESA) technology.
Condition-based maintenance
Samotics has been awarded a three-year exclusive contract to provide ESA monitoring technology and services for Thames Water’s equipment fleet, with an option to renew for another five years at the end of the initial term.
The award is part of Thames Water’s strategy to achieve cost-effective reliability through the condition-based maintenance (CBM) of its critical equipment. To that end, three tenders were issued, for three different CBM technologies: vibration, thermography and ESA.
ESA is the company’s technology of choice for its fleet of submerged assets, whose location makes it hard to acquire high-quality, high-frequency data. Because the electrical data used in ESA can be captured remotely in the motor control center, there is no need to install sensors on or even near the equipment.
Zero carbon emission
The use of electrical data has two more benefits for Thames Water’s overall monitoring strategy. All CBM technologies detect a broad range of mechanical faults.
ESA is the only one that can also detect electrical faults, which cause up to 30 percent of equipment failures. It is also the only CBM technology that can report on energy efficiency, which Thames Water will use to help achieve its goal of net zero carbon by 2030.
At scale
‘Thames Water did an incredible amount of groundwork for this initiative, so they could install working technology at scale from the start,' said Tim van Leeuwen, head of sales at Samotics. 'We are honored and delighted to be their long-term partner for electrical signature analysis.'
Earlier announcement by Samotics involving UK water utilities are Anglian Water that operates Samotics' SAM4 system for predictive maintenance of its underground pumps.
Earlier this year, a 12-month trial of the SAM4 system has been started by United Utilities on 25 pumps at eight locations. SAM4 system has been developed by Samotics and uses electrical signature analysis to predict when and why industrial machines will fail, often months in advance.
