Water & Wastewater
Detect pump faults before they become pollution incidents
SAM4 gives water teams continuous condition monitoring on hard-to-reach assets from the motor control cabinet. No sensors in the wet well. Earlier warning on ragging, blockage, electrical faults, load anomalies, and efficiency loss across distributed pumping stations and treatment works.
Trusted by leaders in water and wastewater
Water assets fail silently. The penalties do not.
Utilities operate thousands of pumping stations across distributed networks. Most run unmonitored between scheduled inspection rounds. When failure hits, the regulatory clock starts immediately.
Sewage pump blockages
Soft blockages degrade pump performance long before a trip alarm fires. Rags and fats, oils and grease (FOG) accumulate on the impeller, increasing energy draw and reducing flow. If both pumps at a dual-pump station degrade together, pollution risk escalates fast. 280,000 to 300,000 sewer blockages occur across England and Wales each year, costing utilities over £100m.
Submerged asset access
If the pump is in the wet well, routine condition data is usually missing until the asset is lifted or the site alarms. Pulling a submersible pump for inspection costs £650 to £1,200 and takes the asset offline for 2 to 4 hours. For single-pump stations, that means zero capacity until it is back in.
A board-level risk now
The Water Special Measures regime increases senior accountability, enforcement pressure, and transparency around pollution reduction plans. Ofwat can impose penalties of up to 10% of relevant turnover, depending on the breach and enforcement context. Every water and sewerage company must now publish an annual Pollution Incident Reduction Plan naming the assets driving risk. These costs are increasingly visible to boards, regulators, customers, and investors.
Energy waste from degraded pumps
Pumping consumes up to 95% of clean water utility energy spend. As impellers erode, efficiency drops 5 to 15% per 5mm of wear-ring clearance increase. Most utilities have no visibility into per-pump energy performance until the quarterly bill arrives.
Dispatch waste on distributed networks
When operators travel to a site without knowing whether the issue is electrical, mechanical, or blockage-related, response slows and cost rises. Some stations require a two-hour drive. Emergency repairs cost 8 to 10 times more than planned work. Without remote diagnostics telling you what is wrong, every alarm is a blind dispatch with the wrong crew and the wrong parts.
Storm overflow and pollution risk
When pumps underperform or fail during high-flow conditions, spill duration and pollution risk can escalate. Event Duration Monitoring shows when storm overflows operate, but it does not explain which asset is degrading or why. SAM4 adds asset-health visibility before failure.
Monitor from the MCC. Not the wet well.
Asset-mounted vibration is usually impractical on submerged pumps. Even when vibration data is available, submerged operation and fluid coupling can make signal interpretation harder. SAM4 reads motor current at the control cabinet to bypass the access problem.
No sensors on the asset
SAM4 monitors from the motor control cabinet. No equipment in wet wells, boreholes, or confined spaces. No pull-outs for sensor installation. When the MCC is outside the classified area, SAM4 avoids asset-mounted equipment in the wet well or hazardous zone. Site permitting still follows local procedure.
Cover many AC-motor-driven assets in your network
One technology covers submersible pumps, borehole pumps, booster pumps, aeration blowers, and oxidation ditch rotors. Many AC-motor-driven assets in your network are candidates, subject to asset-fit review.
Detects what vibration misses on submerged assets
ESA can detect cavitation signatures, ragging and blockage patterns, efficiency loss, sustained load anomalies, and electrical stator faults where these create measurable changes in current or voltage. Mechanical seal degradation is not a primary detection class unless it creates a detectable load or electrical effect. On submerged pumps, vibration is often impractical or incomplete because there is no reliable mounting point on the operating asset.
Dispatch the right crew first time
SAM4 alerts include fault classification and severity. The control room sees what is wrong before sending anyone. That means the right person, the right parts, and one trip instead of three.
“Critical in our monitoring of hard to reach assets such as submersible pumps.”
Where the monitoring gap costs most
These asset types create the highest monitoring gaps in water and wastewater. SAM4 monitors them from the motor control cabinet. See all monitored assets
Submerged Sewage Pumps
Submerged wastewater pumps in pumping stations and sewage collection networks.
Archimedes screws
Open and enclosed screw pumps in water treatment.
Pumps
Centrifugal pumps in water, chemicals, oil & gas, and process industries.
Agitators & mixers
Reactor agitators, tank mixers, and blenders.
Water deployments with verified outcomes.
Control change would reduce aeration blowers’ energy cost by 5% overnight
SAM4 Energy identified a change in blower station control strategy that would instantly start saving this wastewater treatment plant €120k a year, with no
Alert prevents pollution incident and saves €100k
SAM4 Health detected a developing fault on a sewage pump which was not picked up by the customer’s vibration monitoring system. SAM4’s timely alert avoided
Hydraulically rerating an existing booster pump station to reduce energy cost by €99k a year
SAM4 Energy advised to hydraulically rerate one of the two identical booster pumps operating in the same process. This would ensure backup functionality and
Condition monitoring for wastewater pumps: a case study
Read how SAM4 alerted this water industry customer to debris that had started to block this wastewater collection pump's intake.
How Vitens increased operational efficiency by 7% through real-time asset measurements
“Every Drop Sustainable,” that’s the vision at the heart of Vitens, the largest drinking water company in The Netherlands. The utility delivers high-quality
Improving submersible pump efficiency at Sabesp
Founded in 1973, Sabesp (Companhia de Saneamento Básico do Estado de São Paulo) is one of the largest sanitation companies in the world. It provides water and
Early alerts on a degrading oxidation ditch rotor prevent two pollution events and up to €900k in costs
Twice, SAM4 Health provided early warning of gearbox degradation though the vibration system had not yet alerted the customer to a problem.
Preventing downtime on belt-driven equipment
Belt-driven pumps, conveyors and fans keep your plant in motion. Whether you are moving, processing or storing your product, there are probably some very
Preventing downtime on borehole pumps
Pumps are the lifeline of the water and wastewater industry. Borehole pumps are one type of pump that play a critical role in water distribution to
Preventing failure in wastewater inlet screws
Preventing failures in wastewater inlet screws holds significant importance on the agenda for water companies as it helps avert breakdowns and pollution events.
Two pollution events prevented and €840k saved on repairs and emergency mitigation
Early belt degradation is typically difficult to spot through vibration measurements and manual inspections. But not for SAM4 Health, which helped a water
Wastewater inlet station energy cost reduced by €42k per year
Two screw pumps operated at less than a third of their nominal power. SAM4 Energy determined that a single screw pump could easily handle all the flow during
Rightsizing booster pumps to save €121k a year in wasted energy
SAM4 Energy identified a classic mismatch between pump size and system flow that was annually consuming 813 MWh more than it needed to.
Samotics' clogging detection technology identifies a blockage outside of the pump
If a sewage pump unexpectedly breaks or trips due to a blockage, especially during a period of high flow, fluid that should be transported away starts to
Southern Water’s success story: preventing three failures, saving £748K, and ensuring operational resilience
Southern Water is committed to reducing pollution incidents and improving infrastructure resilience. As part of this effort, SAM4 was deployed across 637
How Yorkshire Water saved £390k in potential fines
Yorkshire Water is committed to building robust and resilient clean and wastewater networks for the future in the run up to 2050 and beyond. This is the basis
Early alerts prevent a potential pollution event and save ~€200K in costs at Yorkshire Water
If a sewage pump unexpectedly breaks down during a period of high flow, fluid that should be transported away starts to build up and flood the surrounding
From alert to action: how water teams use SAM4
Detection is only useful if it changes what your team does next. Here is how SAM4 fits the operating rhythm at utilities running thousands of distributed assets.
Red and amber alert triage
Red alerts indicate imminent risk: dispatch immediately. Amber alerts flag developing faults: plan the intervention. The control room sees severity, fault type, and affected asset before deciding whether to send an electrician, a mechanical crew, or a jetter. No more blind dispatch.
Control room integration
Yorkshire Water runs SAM4 monitoring from their 24/7 Bradford control room. Alerts appear alongside SCADA telemetry. Operators triage faults without leaving the desk. For dual-pump stations, if one pump is blocked the response is planned; if both are degrading, it becomes same-day priority.
SAP work order creation
SAM4 alerts can generate a work order in SAP or your CMMS, depending on your integration setup. The work order includes fault type, severity, and recommended action. When the job is closed, the maintenance outcome is fed back to Samotics. That feedback loop is how the model improves over time.
Who owns what
Control room operators handle triage and dispatch. Reliability engineers review trends and plan interventions. Maintenance planners schedule the work. SAM4 does not replace any role. It gives each role better information, earlier.
“It provides me with a sign before a pump faults and gives me a head start on the repair of the issue.”
No sensors in the wet well
Clip on at the MCC
Current transformers clip around the phase wires inside the motor control cabinet. Cabinet-based. Brief MCC outage to install; under 60 minutes per motor in typical configurations. Site permitting and cabinet-access procedures still apply.
Connect via cellular gateway
Data transmits over 4G/5G. Cellular deployment can avoid firewall or VPN changes. Security review and approved data routing still follow your utility's process. Store-and-forward buffering handles remote connectivity gaps common across rural pumping networks.
Monitor from anywhere
The SAM4 dashboard shows asset health, fault alerts, and energy performance. Alerts route to your control room or CMMS. Yorkshire Water runs 24/7 monitoring from their Bradford control room.
How Yorkshire Water rolled out across 2,500+ pumping stations
Yorkshire Water ran a competitive European procurement with eight bidders. They developed an asset scoring methodology to prioritise the highest-risk pumping stations first. A dedicated engagement coordinator managed change management across operations teams, embedding SAM4 alerts into existing control room procedures and SAP work order workflows.
Trial selection
Asset scoring ranked pumping stations by failure history, criticality, and access difficulty. High-risk stations were instrumented first.
Procurement
European-wide competitive tender. Eight bidders. Samotics selected as sole supplier of ESA monitoring technology.
Change management
Dedicated engagement coordinator. Control room procedures updated. SAP job feedback loop ensures every alert closes with a recorded outcome.
“Allows correct allocation for resources as confidence levels are high when SAM4 predicts failure could be imminent. Saves on wasted maintenance visits.”
The questions water engineers actually ask
If one pump shows a blockage signature and the other does not, it is an asset fault. Plan the intervention. If both pumps at a station show the same degradation pattern, it is a system issue: likely a rising sump level or upstream problem. That becomes same-day priority because pollution risk escalates fast. SAM4 provides this dual-pump logic automatically.
SAM4 alerts route into your existing control room alongside SCADA telemetry. Yorkshire Water runs this from their Bradford control room, 24/7. Red alerts trigger immediate dispatch. Amber alerts go into planned maintenance. Each alert generates a work order in SAP or your CMMS with fault type, severity, and recommended action. The system adapts to your existing procedures. It does not replace them.
Every alert closes with a maintenance outcome recorded by your team. That feedback trains the model for your specific assets and operating conditions. SAM4's false alert rate across water deployments is 2.1%, verified across 5,222 resolved condition indicators. Sewage-specific baseline models account for variable solids content that would otherwise inflate false alarm rates.
SAM4 does not require historical data to begin. The system builds its own baselines from live electrical measurements. Within weeks of installation, it has enough data to detect anomalies. Detection accuracy improves over time as the model learns normal operating patterns for each specific asset.
Control room operators gain real-time fault triage: they see what is wrong before dispatching. Reliability engineers get trend data for planning interventions before failures occur. Maintenance planners schedule work based on actual condition, not calendar cycles. No role is replaced. Each role gets better information, earlier. Yorkshire Water appointed a dedicated engagement coordinator to embed these workflows during rollout.
Start with your highest-risk sites. Yorkshire Water used an asset scoring methodology to rank pumping stations by failure history, criticality, and access difficulty. Install at those sites first, prove the value, then scale. They went from trial to 2,000 pumping stations via a competitive European procurement. The deployment model is designed for fleet scale, not one-off pilots.
No. SAM4 is complementary. On submerged pumps where vibration sensors cannot physically be installed, SAM4 is the primary condition monitoring source. On accessible assets where vibration is already deployed, ESA adds electrical fault detection and energy performance data that vibration does not cover. It works alongside your existing SCADA and telemetry, not instead of it.
SAM4 is monitoring-only. It reads electrical signals passively. It has no connection to control systems and cannot send commands to any asset. Yorkshire Water's cybersecurity review classified the system as low threat. Data transmits over cellular, completely separate from the operational network. No IT/OT convergence required.
Where SAM4 fits, and where it needs review
SAM4 is strongest where the monitored asset is AC-motor-driven, the electrical signal is accessible at the MCC, and the failure modes create measurable changes in current, voltage, torque, speed, or load. Fit depends on motor configuration, drive topology, duty cycle, load stability, operating regime, and the failure modes you want to detect. During asset-fit review, we identify which assets are strong candidates, which need engineering review, and which are better covered by vibration, process instrumentation, OEM monitoring, or inspection.
Prioritise the pumping stations most likely to create pollution risk.
Start with the highest-risk wet wells, boreholes, and pumping stations. Review asset fit, deployment path, and expected operational impact before scaling.