Dulas, Emtec and Scottish Water to address climate emergency

Delivering energy recovery systems to the water industry

Dulas has joined forces with renewable company, Emtec, to install a new hydropower energy recovery system at Scottish Water’s Carron Valley water treatment works in North Lanarkshire.

Emtec has a track record of delivering turnkey on-site solar PV systems across Scotland and North England. They have teamed up with Dulas for their specialist knowledge in designing and installing hydropower systems to deliver this project together.

Reducing costs and carbon footprint

Dulas is looking forward to working with Emtec and breaking ground on this exciting project where there will be a requirement to tap into the mains water supply from the Carron Valley reservoir and divert some of it to a turbine with a capacity of between 50-100 kW. The exact output will depend on the normal fluctuations of the Carron Valley Reservoir, but is hoped to be in the region of some 300,000 kWh per year. The potential for high-capacity output over most of the year will mean a significant reduction in the onsite electricity use. As well as helping to keep the costs of delivering services to customers low, the project will help Scottish Water meet its overall global target for carbon emissions reduction.

Scottish Water

Scottish Water is wholly owned by the Scottish Government. It provides water and wastewater services to 2.61 million households and more than 150,000 businesses across Scotland, delivering 1.52 billion litres of fresh drinking water and safely removing, treating and returning 1.10 billion litres of wastewater to the environment.

Water treatment is very energy-intensive

Water treatment is an incredibly energy-intensive process – the International Water Association estimates that wastewater treatment plants consume between 1%-3% of global energy output. Scottish Water is very open about being one of the largest electricity users in Scotland. But it is also committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2040, five years before the 2045 target set by the Scottish Government. To get to net zero, water companies need to find ways to become more energy efficient, embrace low carbon construction, use lower carbon energy products and invest in renewable power technologies. Scottish Water has been taking action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change on its services for around a decade, with a variety of mix of solar, hydro and wind installations across its operations in Scotland.

Track record delivering schemes for the water industry

Work is expected to start in the summer, with an ambitious plan to be fully operable by early 2024. Dulas already has experience of working for the water industry, having installed, designed and commissioned several similar schemes for Welsh Water, including the Strata Florida hydro scheme and one at Llys-y-fran in Pembrokeshire. We hope that this installation will be followed by many more as Scottish Water seek to build out further similar energy recovery schemes across its network, where there is a huge amount of untapped energy in various industrial facilities.