Host: Reese Tisdale
Guests: Eric Bindler | Research Director | Bluefield Research &
Keith Hays | Co-Founder | Bluefield Research &
Steph Aldock | Marketing Director | Bluefield Research
Category: 🔬 Research | Water Trends
Podcast’s Essential Bites:
[6:11] EB: “When I think about the future of digital water, it's really what the industry needs to do to actually democratize access to […] technologies to […] the small and mid sized utilities, and the emerging market utilities? […] Cloud computing has played a major role, so far in helping to scale some of those solutions down and making software accessible to utilities that don't have a full-time IT staff that can't afford to maintain their own on premise software. Certainly also just continuing advances in just low cost sensors in hardware […] [and] lower cost analytics software.”
[7:30] EB: “The real disruption here, in my mind, is going to be business models, in terms of new ways of selling and procuring and maintaining technology and digital services that are gonna make them more accessible to smaller and to emerging market utilities. And so that could be software as a service, or data as a service, or network as a service. It could be more regional, or joint procurement models. It could be utility consolidation, and all of the kinds of opportunities for technology adoption that stem from that.”
[10:42] EB: “Especially in emerging markets, where we're seeing a lot of population growth, where we're seeing a lot of urbanization, we're seeing new water, wastewater, stormwater infrastructure being put in the ground. There's an opportunity to kind of make that smart make that digital to begin with. And so that's what we're seeing in India, for example, to the extent that we're seeing investment in digital water.”
[16:07] EB: “In my mind, the biggest losers are going to be existing incumbent water industry players, whether they be pipe companies, or pump companies, or OEM services providers […] that don't get smart about digital as soon as possible. I think that's really where we're gonna see the biggest loss of opportunity of market share.”
[18:26] KH: “One [source of disruption] is going to come from the regulatory angle, and that's going to be probably cracking down on specific contaminants of concern, whether we're talking about PFAS and the US or other micro pollutants in Europe. And that could require a change in terms of how biosolids are managed and how wastewater treatment is managed, and how different sources of pollutants are identified and controlled.”
[26:40] RT: “We're starting to see some of these larger players really look at hydrogen or hydrogen hubs to be deployed for electric power storage, use it for transportation, and maybe on site power, or even fertilizer manufacturing ammonia, and things like that. […] The hydrogen piece is probably further than 10 years out. But the reason we're talking about this [is] water is the raw material [which] is supplying the plant. […] And then there's […] some [water] treatment that will have to be had. […] But also what is the supply? Is it just gonna be groundwater, will be service water, it could be reclaimed wastewater, it could be desalinated water, which could be expensive. But the point is, it could be an opportunity for water utilities to also partly invest in their own system for other uses as well.”
Rating: 💧💧💧
🎙️ Full Episode: Apple | Spotify | Google
🕰️ 39 min | 🗓️ 06/07/2022
✅ Time saved: 37 min
