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Project Zero

Project Zero

Challenge: Breakthrough 1
Water cycle: Customers
Funding amount: £2,898,000
Lead water company: Affinity Water
Partner water company: Albion Water Limited
Delivery stage: In progress
Est. completion date: Dec 2025

Project Zero

Original title: Water Neutrality at NAV Sites

Funding amount: £2,898,000

Led by: Affinity Water

Partners: Albion Water Limited, Aquality Trading & Consulting Ltd, BUUK Infrastructure UK No 2 Ltd, Grapviners Ltd, H2OiQ Ltd, Hydraloop International, Propelair – Phoenix Product Development Ltd,  SDS Ltd, Skewb.

See project updates on the Project Zero website.

This project will deliver a sustainable, water-saving solution in response to new housing developments being built. Winning £2.9 million, this project will minimise water demand and offset water consumption with new technologies, to ensure the total water use in the community remains the same as it was before the new homes were built. We will manage the usage and offset requirements across three sites by installing water saving devices in residential properties – shower heads, tap inserts and larger infrastructure such as greywater recycling and rainwater harvesting units. This will minimise demand in customers’ homes. We will also install larger technologies on commercial buildings like schools and leisure centres – for example greywater recycling and ultra low flush toilets. This will offset customer usage and maintain existing baseline network demand. We will also be monitoring at a detailed level the patterns and trends of usage. This will allow us to adopt an open-data approach and share anonymised insights in water usage with the wider innovation market.

In the last quarter, we published the results for Site 2 and actively disseminated our findings by attending six conferences and engaging in numerous one-on-one meetings with regulators, water companies, housing developers amongst other stakeholders. We estimate reaching approximately 500-1,000 individuals face-to-face and Social Media reach: Impressions: 15202 Likes:805 Repost: 23 We have commenced the deployment of smart metering for Site 2 and initiated discussions on data management and insights. A slight delay occurred as we explored collaboration with our internal team for the smart metering rollout, aiming to find efficiencies and save resources. We are preparing to publish our economic modelling analysis for Site 2 and the NAV insights report soon. In terms of open data, we are aligning our efforts with the STREAM initiative and working internally to bring this project to fruition. Our engagement in risk mitigation continues to grow, with plans to update regulators post-election. Additionally, we are finalising legal agreements with new project partners, Southern Water and Urban & Civic. Although these negotiations have caused some delays, we are committed to catching up on any lost time and advancing our project objectives efficiently.

 

Resources

For more information on Project Zero, take a look at the following resources:

  • Read the case study from December 2022
  • Watch the following interview with the project: