A NEW piece of equipment which can stop customers in a rural village from intermittent loss of water during a power cut is now up and running.

Residents in and around East Tisted would sometimes lose their water supply if a power blip occurred at a nearby water treatment works.

Now South East Water has built a new, state-of-the-art booster pumping station featuring a smart control valve which can re-route water supply to customers as part of its pledge to pump more than £430m into its drinking water network by 2025 .

The new technology can detect when pressure within the network of pipes is too low and automatically kicks in – drawing more water towards the area in need.

Steve Benton, the company’s head of operations west, said: “Due to the rural location of our treatment works, we do sometimes experience short intermittent, power outages.

“Previously, this meant that customers living in elevated areas would often lose their water supply which is obviously unacceptable to us – even if the power failure is beyond our control.

“By installing this valve, we can re-route water towards East Tisted from a different supply source when the power goes down.

“We recently experienced a power outage and the new equipment worked seamlessly – meaning customers maintained their water supply while the power was down.”

Simon Godsmark, South East Water project manager, added: “I’m really grateful to the local community for their patience while we completed this important scheme.

“I have no doubt they will reap the benefits of the new pumping station and smart control valve for years to come.”