United Utilities is rolling out the biggest ‘listening’ project of its kind in the world in a bid to tackle water leakage.

Supported by installing up to 100,000 PermaNET+ devices in the next two years, United Utilities aim to reduce water leakage on their network by 20% by 2025.

This £30m investment is as a result of a successful trial in Liverpool and Manchester, where 2,000 PermaNET+ devices were installed and were thought to have saved up to 5 million litres of water per day.

Kevin Fowlie, Network Delivery Director at United Utilities explained:

“Our customers have told us it is one of the issues most important to them, so we have committed to a 20 per cent reduction in leakage over the coming five-year investment period, and that means using the latest innovations”.

“By 2020 we will have the largest estate of acoustic logger technology in the world.  Every quarter of a mile on our water network we will be able to glean real-time data, allowing us to respond faster and more accurately when a pipe begins to leak”.

The new loggers will join a growing arsenal of innovative ideas employed by United Utilities in the battle to reduce leakage, including satellite technology and specially trained water sniffer dogs.

For more information about the United Utilities project please click here.

For more information about PermaNET+ please click here.