Aquify's Smart Water Data And Analytics Solution Now Live In Rosemont, Illinois

The Village of Rosemont has begun a new era of unprecedented visibility into their drinking water distribution system for the benefit of its customers.

Aquify, an Exelon company, has completed the design and implementation of a comprehensive sensor and analytics system on the Village of Rosemont drinking water distribution network.

The Aquify system segments Rosemont’s system into three Districted Meter Areas (DMAs). Aquify installed eight flow meters and pressure sensors which are now delivering real-time data to Aquify’s 24/7 monitoring and analytics teams. The system utilizes TaKaDu’s machine learning analytics software with insertion flow meters supplied by Trimble Water and FlowTronic.

The Aquify system is expected to deliver economic benefits to the Village of more than two times the investment. The environmental and sustainability benefits include reduced water loss, reduced energy consumption and reduced chemicals used to pump and treat the water.

Rosemont, a community adjacent to O’Hare airport and home to 4,000 residents, is a convention and tourist destination. The village is home to the Allstate Arena, the Rosemont Theater, a minor league baseball franchise and ballpark, and a 200,000 sq. ft. dining and entertainment district. Rosemont’s water distribution network includes 31 miles of pipe and services approximately 730 water customers.

The partnership between Rosemont and Aquify began when Village leaders were seeking a solution to reduce Non-Revenue Water (NRW) through the implementation of remote monitoring technology. NRW has been rising in the Village over recent years and traditional leak detection methodologies have not always been effective. Further, Rosemont has no reliable way to measure water theft. Finally, limited staff resources made an in-house solution impractical.

“After a significant due-diligence process, we determined that Aquify brought all the right elements together to help lead us into a new era of leveraging technology to the service of our water customers,” said Lisa DiMatteo, Director of Public Utilities. “As all public water utilities know well, water is becoming an ever more precious commodity. It was essential that we do everything possible to reduce the amount of water wasted in our system to be fiscally and environmentally responsible for our entire community. Aquify has provided us the vision and execution plan to get this done without burdening current staff and operations. We’re delighted to begin this journey and are confident we will see tremendous results.”

“In the Chicago-area, Rosemont is noted as a community of forward-thinkers and action-oriented leaders,” said Lev Goldberg, CEO of Aquify. “We’re delighted to be entering into this partnership with Rosemont to deploy our proven solutions to reduce water loss and improve system visibility through real-time monitoring and insights.”

Engineering services related to the project are provided by Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd (CBBEL). CBBEL, who recommended Aquify to the Village to center their water loss management strategy, anticipate seeing additional benefits in their hydraulic modeling and water system planning efforts for the Village.

“For communities like Rosemont that use Lake Michigan supply, reducing water loss will quickly become a priority as the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) adjusts its supply allocations,” said Christopher Burke, CEO of CBBEL. “So, it’s important for us to bring new options that make water loss management strategies easy for our customers to deploy.”

Case-in-Point
Skokie, Illinois Finds Major Non-Surfacing Leak; Gets Immediate Return on Investment

Aquify technology immediately found a leak that was spilling 720,000 gallons of treated drinking water per day into a storm sewer.

Before its sensor and analytics technology system had even become fully operational, Aquify found an unreported leak that was spilling 720,000 gallons of treated drinking water per day into a storm sewer.

Utility water leaks are inevitable, especially in this time of aging water infrastructure. Leaks are calculated in gallons-per-minute (GPM) but an equally important measurement is leak run time (how long a leak runs before it’s repaired). Large main breaks may lose a lot of water but are often discovered quickly and fixed immediately, thus having a short “run time”. Smaller leaks lose less water per minute but if undiscovered for days, weeks or months will lose much more water than large leaks. That’s why reducing water loss is as much about finding the leaks that go unnoticed as it is about rushing to fix a big, disruptive break.

Skokie was in the final stages of implementing an Aquify system which included 36 sensors, machine learning analytics software, and 24/7 monitoring and analytics services to do just that. Monitoring early data from these new sensors, Emma Quail, Aquify’s customer success manager, identified a significant increase in flow in the Village’s Southeast zone, analyzed their system and SCADA data and notified Skokie’s utility crew

Skokie’s crew went out to the target area but couldn’t see evidence of a leak. But the Skokie team trusted Emma and the Aquify data and started inspecting storm sewer manholes. Sure enough, they found a rush of drinking water running into the storm sewer. The non-surfacing leak was losing 500 gallon per minute (the equivalent of 720,000 gallons per day). The break, which occurred on an 8” cast iron pipe, was located at one of Skokie’s busiest intersections, which muffled the sound of rushing water making it extremely difficult to detect.

Locating and repairing the break happened over two days instead of many months, saving considerable water loss and money for the Village. This is especially important for Skokie, who use 2.75 billion gallons annually which is purchased from the City of Evanston. Had the leak continued for multiple months, the cost of the water loss alone (not including energy costs for water pumping) would have exceeded the cost of the first year of Aquify service.

A 500 GPM leak is considered small by utilities standards, and without sensors and analytics such leaks can go undetected for weeks and months. Consider this: a 500 GPM Leak is…

• 720,000 gallons of treated and pumped water wasted in a day.
• 5 million gallons of water wasted in a week.
• The equivalent water used every day by 2,400 households.
• $25,776.00 in wasted expenses per month (cost of water)