Infrasync Newsletter #12 - Why Smart Water Technology - Drinking Water

It’s typical to see a great technology or hear of a great idea at a conference. It can be a new process, sensors, software, or other innovation. The technology looks great, will solve so many of your issues, and has glowing references. You get all excited about it and start daydreaming on the drive home about when to get started. However, the next day back at the office you have other priorities to deal with so you tell yourself you will get to it next week. Maybe next week you take action on it or maybe not. Eventually you think about it every few months but never becomes a priority.

Why does this happen to all of us? We want to improve and do better but what is holding us back?

At a utility this happens all the time, it’s not unique to any specific organization or team but is widespread. This happens because while it’s a great technology, it’s just not what your team NEEDS now. Many times, what NEEDS to be done gets confused with what SHOULD be done. This can confuse priorities in your team. Or even worse, your whole team is focused on something that SHOULD be done while ignoring something that NEEDS to be done.

Focus this down on drinking water, specifical non-revenue water or water loss. How do you know where is the line from SHOULD vs NEEDS

Use a framework of 3 key areas

Regulatory – Are you required to do this by law? Or is there a risk that now doing something will end up violating the law?

Financial – Is this dragging you down financially and outside of budget limitations and causing you to siphon money from other needs? Do you have to figure how a way to do it more cost effectively or you will be directly impacted?

Operational – Is this impacting your day-to-day operations so your people cannot do a good job? Or causing such a big political distraction you are losing trust and support from elected officials and the public?

Let’s focus this through the lens of drinking water distribution, specifically water loss.

Regulatory – it varies by state. You may just need to follow best practices with no specific threshold. You may be required to submit a water audit to be eligible for any state water funding. Some states even have a hard cap such as Tennessee that states any utility over 40% water loss must follow a water loss control plan.

Financial – The cost to source, treat, and distribute water ranges for each utility but the is pushing $3 per 1,000 gallons in 2024. For a utility with an average daily production of 10 million gallons a day that comes out to $30,000 a day. If you are losing 20% of that water then that is a $6,000 per day or $2,190,000 a year. Can your utility afford that?

Operational – Utah State University does a pipeline break survey. The break rate per mile of pipeline is a good indicator of how often your utility needs to respond and take emergency action for leaks. If you have a full system of PVC, you likely don’t have too many daily emergencies. But if you have a system full of Cast Iron (CI) then good luck as you are responding to over 27 breaks per 100 miles of pipeline a year. How can your team focus on proactive waterline maintenance if they are daily interrupted by waterline breaks?

At your utility, evaluate do you NEED to take action on non-revenue water? The answer is likely yes, but what exactly?

At a utility, each capital dollar must be well spent. How can you support and manage that? Do a quick exercise, write down the top three primary causes of your water loss issue. Then write down the primary solution, this is typically replacement or capital projects. Then for each primary solution think about how you can use technology to support that goal and make each dollar spent more effective. My example is below.

If you don’t have the related technology, there is a multiple on how effective your program is. It varies by utility. A utility with an annual budget of $10,000,000 on waterline replacements…how are they monitoring the effectiveness of each dollar? Best practice is to establish per project before, during, and after controls using technology.

For a pipeline replacement program, you many budget 5% of the total capital cost for performance monitoring. On a $5,000,000 neighborhood pipeline replacement project that would be about $250,000 for technology support. That is enough to set up district metering for the project, some software to track the flows daily in and out, and field services to pinpoint any leaks and make sure all the equipment is fully functional.

This has the huge benefit of making sure each capital dollar is well spent. Depending on the technology and process used a utility can go from 30% effective to around 90% effective in targeted waterline replacement projects. Or in other words a 3 times return on the same dollars spent at the utility.

So for your water project? What technology are you using and are you fully using it? Sample technologies below, but there are plenty more options.

Make sense to connect?

Are you working to help your utility or technology company take the next step forward? If you want to talk through a challenge or share something interesting your team did please shoot me a note at [email protected] or schedule a 15 minute call here.