NHS Gwent Case Study
Qonnectis saves Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust £66,000
on its annual water bill.

The implementation of a water leakage detection initiative by the NHS trust Energy Management team at County Hospital, Griffithstown, has saved the Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust over £66,000 on its annual water bill and will receive an additional £66,000 in sewerage rebates from its water supplier for the last two years. The water meter monitoring service provided by Qonnectis plc involved the use of a Qonnectis universal meter logger and internet based water meter monitoring and analysis on myMeter.info web site powered by Qonnectis. The savings made by the trust will be applied towards additional energy saving technology investments.

Local NHS managers at County Hospital, Griffithstown had long suspected there may have been a water leak on the site, as the water bills appeared excessive compared to hospitals of a similar size. Having just completed a successful Qonnectis water leakage detection project at Tonteg Hospital for the Pontypridd NHS Trust, Qonnectis was asked to install a system and provide web services to track water usage at the County Hospital.

A Qonnectis iStaQ-LG GSM-enabled universal logger was installed next to the site water meter at the County Hospital and continuously posted water usage trends to the Qonnectis myMeter.info web site.

When Griffithstown County Hospital NHS engineer, John Jukes, analysed the results on the website he discovered there was a very high level of water consumption during the early hours of the morning – a period when water demand should have been low.

Wayne Churches, Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust’s Energy Manager (pictured above centre and receiving NHS Best Practice Award (energy Efficiency) at Arena Wales Environment Awards and left using myMeter.info website by Qonnectis) was delighted with the results of the leakage detection initiative. “Following these excellent results we have now deployed the Qonnectis internet-enabled utility metering technology at all of our major sites throughout the Trust.”It soon became apparent there was a leak of 4 cubic metres per hour on the site and trial holes were excavated at positions where the leak was thought to be. Because of the high number of unrecorded service tees off the site’s water main, the leak initially proved difficult to locate. When it was eventually found and repaired, water demand on the site was reduced by a factor of 10!


Qonnectis Director, Percy Albuquerque commented “Qonnectis water and energy users utilising the myMeter.info web based metering services have benefited from being able to analyse and identify abnormal utility consumption, correct excessive usage or leakage and provide daily reporting to facilities management on what is becoming a major cost in operating expense in most public and private sector organisations as a result of the recent rises in water and energy prices. In most cases the payback period on deploying Qonnectis’s myMeter.info utility consumption monitoring and analysis is less than two years, in the case of Griffithstown, payback was less than one month with immediate positive cash flow benefit from the second month onwards in reduced water charges.”

The energy team at Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust located in South Wales manages over 70 properties including 9 hospitals including Royal Gwent (600 beds) and Nevil Hall (400 beds). The trust spends over £4m p.a. on electricity, Gas and water billed from 300+ meter points.

Qonnectis plc is a company quoted on the London Stock Exchange AIM (symbol QTI) providing internet based utility automation and enterprise energy management services. The company supplies major utility companies and energy users within the UK and overseas.