38 n WATER October 2026 www.drivesncontrols.com Stopping leaks: why water operators can't afford to wait Water is the world's most precious resource. It is also one of its most squandered. Today, around one in four people lack access to safe drinking water, and four billion experience severe water scarcity for at least one month every year. Yet across the globe, water networks are haemorrhaging water before it ever reaches a tap. It makes little sense to spend vast amounts of energy and money pumping water out of the ground, treating it to become potable standard, and then losing it through ageing infrastructure. With population growth and shifting weather patterns tightening the squeeze on supplies, water scarcity has become an operational reality for utility managers worldwide. The question is whether they act before the cost of inaction becomes irreversible. The pressure problem Leakage is rarely a single dramatic failure. More often, it is the slow, invisible accumulation of stress on infrastructure that was never designed to withstand it. The primary culprit is over-pressurisation – specifically, the pressure transients and surge events that ripple through pipe networks whenever a pump is started or stopped via a direct-on-line (DOL) starter. When a pump comes on without any ramp-up control, it sends a shockwave through the network, exploiting every weak point along the way. Transient pressures can easily reach double their design tolerance level. When a burst manifests above ground, water can shoot 10 to 20 metres into the air – but damage is rarely that visible. It’s the quiet leaks, the ones dripping unseen for years, that truly bleed a network dry. The financial and operational consequences add up rapidly. Every burst means that leakage detection, repair materials, resources are being diverted from Water leaks from utility pipes is a costly and disruptive problem. Installing drives in the right places can take the pressure off precious water resources, as Torben Poulsen, ABB’s business development manager for drives and pumps, and James Chalmers, vice-president of ABB Drive Products’ water and wastewater sales, explain. Water utilities can cut leaks, boost efficiency and improve their public images by using variable-speed drives to control their pumps more effectively
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