NewsNews – OpinionWater Breakthrough Challenge
March 10, 2025
This is a guest blog from Hydrao, a partner on the Hydro-powered concentric smart meter project, which was awarded funding in Water Breakthrough Challenge 3.
Hydrao, a French company based in the South of France, is working on innovations that have the potential to drastically change how we think about water usage. Through their innovative approach, Hydrao is not just helping people save water but also paving the way for a more sustainable future by alerting people about their daily water use. Part of their journey through the Ofwat Innovation Fund shows how collaboration, technological innovation, and the right funding mechanisms can turn an idea into an innovative product.
Climate change is driving the need to conserve water as a key resource. The world is facing an escalating water crisis, and every drop counts. While in the UK water scarcity is often not top of mind, the reality is different in certain regions of the country. A growing awareness of water usage and its impact on the environment has led to demand for more advanced water-saving technologies. An area in need of improvement is water metering.
Current concentric water meters can only provide very basic and occasional information as they are constrained by the limits of battery power.
At the same time, a significant portion of UK households do not have water meters installed, leading to inefficient water consumption, overuse, and a lack of awareness. In the UK, 40% of households don’t have a water meter at all, and only 12% of households have a smart water meter.
In response to this, Hydrao has developed a solution to this problem with their innovative water-saving technology: a Hydro Powered Concentric Smart Meter.
Hydrao’s journey began with a simple but effective idea: creating products that promote water conservation through greater awareness. The company started with a smart shower head that provides real-time feedback on water consumption. It wasn’t just a matter of saving water but also influencing the behaviour of costumers. By making individuals aware of their water use, Hydrao aimed to instigate behavioural change.
Building on the success of their showerheads(1), Hydrao then turned their attention to water meters. The company wanted to develop an intelligent water meter capable of measuring consumption accurately and in real-time, so that users could be alerted immediately if something was amiss—whether it be a leak or an unusual spike in consumption. This allows users to take action and correct the problem before it escalates.
One of the key innovations that sets Hydrao apart from others in the market is their self-powered water meter, which requires no battery. Instead, it is powered by the flow of water itself. This makes the product sustainable, efficient – the meter uses the flow of water to provide limitless power to the meter. This would enable live, rich, data to be provided to the consumer and to utilities, enabling action to reduce consumption and prevent leaks. In addition to saving water, the meter would also have other benefits such as having a longer lifespan, reduced maintenance, and avoiding the use of environmentally harmful batteries. It would also help for remote installations where maintaining a battery-powered meter can be challenging.
Although Hydrao initially developed these solutions for the French market, the company quickly realised that their technology could have a significant impact in the UK as well. The real difference, however, was that in France, meters are typically fixed horizontally, while in the UK, they tend to be vertical. This presented a new challenge for Hydrao, who had to adapt their technology to the specific needs of this market.
Hydrao’s entrance into the UK market came through a collaboration with Suez and Northumbrian Water. This partnership allowed them to bring their innovative technology to the UK, adapting their existing designs to fit the UK’s water meter infrastructure. This partnership proved fruitful, as it not only provided Hydrao access to new markets but also gave them the opportunity to work with major players in the industry.
With water companies in England and Wales set to install over 10 million smart meters during 2025-30, there are significant opportunities for the project to be rolled out and implemented over the coming years.
One of the most significant advantages of working on this project has been access to the Ofwat Innovation Fund. For a small company like Hydrao, which doesn’t have a lot of means to fund large-scale R&D, the support provided by this fund has been invaluable. While in France the funding model provides up to 40% of the development costs in most of the non-collaborative cases, the Ofwat Innovation Fund finances up to 90% of the funded projects, providing a much-needed financial boost for smaller companies with big ideas. The Ofwat innovation fund eases as well collaboration between large compagnies and small, while in France more stringent rules make such collaborations an exception.
Through this funding model, Hydrao has been able to accelerate their product development. With the final testing planned to take place in June 2025, the learnings from this project will be available to the sector by the end of the summer 2025. This project allows them to collaborate with big players in the industry like Northumbrian Water while minimizing their own financial risk. This unique funding mechanism not only helps small businesses thrive but also enables them to bring innovative solutions to the market faster.
Looking ahead, Hydrao is focused on scaling their innovation. As their smart water meters continue to show promising results, the next phase of the project will focus on industrializing the product, making it widely available to both businesses and consumers. With the success of their pilot project, Hydrao aims to bring their solution to even more customers, not just in the UK but across Europe as well.
The importance of water conservation is only growing as water scarcity becomes an increasingly urgent issue across the world. Governments, utilities, and consumers alike are starting to understand the role that innovation can play in addressing these challenges.
Hydrao’s journey shows that successful innovation needs the right collaboration, and the right kind of support. Supporting a variety of innovations relating to smart water meters are bringing us one step closer to water efficiency.
With Ofwat’s innovation fund set to expand to £400 million in 2025-30 – as well as a new £25 million water efficiency competition planned– hopefully more innovators like Hydrao will begin their journey over the coming years.
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If you’re interested in learning more about the project’s latest developments, check the project’s page on the Fund website. As of February 2025, the project team are working towards having their beta prototype manufactured and ready for testing at the end of May, with testing during June. The project aims to complete full reporting and dissemination of learnings by the end of August 2025.
The project is also featured in our learning report on water-efficient communities.
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(1) The showerhead offers an optimum flow rate of 6.6 L/min compared with the usual 9 L/min or even 12 L/min, saving over 50%.
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Water Breakthrough Challenge
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Water Breakthrough Challenge
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