The Rise of Digital Water

How and why digitalisation can revolutionise the 21st century utility.

By Kala Vairavamoorthy and Will Sarni.

Global water utilities are about to discover – as 19th and 20th century energy utilities already have – the disruptive force of an innovative technology. It wasn’t the threat any had expected. Nor is it one we can continue to avoid.

In 1883, Thomas Edison had just launched the world’s first ‘power station’ burning coal to supply 59 customers. That same year, Charles Fritts invented a selenium semiconductor that converted limitless and distributed sunlight, without heat or moving parts, into electricity. The pioneering energy titan Werner von Siemens hailed this breakthrough as “scientifically of the most far-reaching importance.” But with 1 percent efficiency, high cost, no storage, and intermittent supply, photovoltaics seemed a negligible distraction to the established energy utility business model.

Since then, energy utilities have largely been slow to embrace opportunities with solar. In the 1950s, solar conductors powered toys, radios and satellites. By the 1980s cheaper rooftop solar panels were linked to the grid. Today, solar shingles, film, and fabric are everywhere. Yet while the sun still only generates less than 2 percent of global electricity, it has begun to erode the rigid foundations of energy utilities.

Why?

The fast-evolving skeleton and skin of solar technology has lowered solar’s price from US$200 to $0.30 per watt. Yet infrastructure “hardware” cost is only a small fraction of the answer.

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