Background
Hørve is a small railway town located in Odsherred Municipality, 22 km west of Holbæk. To the southwest, Hørve has merged with the village of Vallekilde. With only a small sign separating them, the two towns are now therefore considered as one area. The area was separately sewered in the 1960s, but today it faces issues with its wastewater system, which is heavily affected by rainwater. These problems include a large amount of extraneous water and frequent, significant overflows at the pumping station in the northeastern part of Hørve. From this pumping station all the sewage water from both cities is pumped to a wastewater treatment plant. The plan was to identify the primary causes of these issues themselves, which is why they initially started by installing sensors to track down the extraneous water. After six months, they realized that unfortunately, they couldn't get valid data from the sensors, so they agreed to seek professional help to narrow down the area and answer the big question: Where is all the water coming from and how do we reduce the overflows?
Hørve
2500
Inhabitants
100%
of the sewage system is separate
15 km
Pipeline
26%
Utilization rate
Vallekilde
800
Inhabitants
100%
of the sewage system is separate
6 km
Pipeline
23%
Utilization rate
The Dryp solution.
Odsherred Utility initiated a collaboration with Dryp back in May 2023, partly based on the excellent synergy between Dryp's solution and the utility's approachbasin to data-driven development. Togehter we chose an extraneous water solution from Dryp with 25 water level sensors, installed and maintained by Dryp.
Torben Hjulskov
Insights from data.
We knew that large amounts of extraneous water would be identified in the wastewater system and that there were numerous overflows at the pumping stations downstream of the two towns. But with the collected real-time data, we have been able to measure the following:
Conclusion
The pumping station in the area was supposed to handle wastewater and therefore should not be affected by rainwater. Odsherred Utility knew beforehand that the station was haverly affected by rainwater causing these overloads at the pumping station and thereby overflow to the nearby river.
Which is why, prior to the collaboration with Dryp, they had been considering constructing a sewage basin as a solution to their challenges.
Their expectation was that a basin of 50-150 m3 would be able to handle almost all the overflows they experienced, despite their system being separate sewage.
In hindsight, it is now clear that this investment would not have solved the utility's problem, as the volume of water turned out to be much larger.
Without the real-time data, they would have ended up wasting 1 million DKK on building a basin that they would not have derived value from.
The next step.
The next step for Odsherred Utility includes tracing some of the extraneous water, which they now know is due to misconnections based on the data provided by Dryp. They are choosing pipe stretches based on the Dryp extraneous water "heat map".
The operations department is now actively searching, and they know they can derive much more value from this than from the previously planned basin.
Odsherred Utility has entered into a proactive process to address the issues in a faster and more cost-effective manner.
Torben Hjulskov