In recent years, the reduction of water losses has become a burning issue within the water industry and utilities, either for financial or ecological reasons, are under increasing pressure to enhance resource efficiency. However, practitioners know that assessing and monitoring the performance of water loss reduction programs is a real challenge, and what at first may sound like a simple task, in practice turns out to be a rather complex undertaking. By Monika Konatar and Dr. Thomas Schiller
When you consider how much time, effort, and money goes toward creating clean, safe drinking water, every drop should make it to the consumer.
A rising number of small cities are adopting smart water meter technology as a way to cut costs.
It’s no secret that municipalities across the country are facing budget constraints.
City Utilities of Springfield, MO, a multiservice utility delivering electricity, natural gas, and water services to more than 106,000 customers, needed a way to provide timely data about consumption and efficiency to customers across its three different service offerings. While existing technology offered visibility into gas and electricity consumption for the utility and its customers, the options for managing water usage were limited.
Recordall Turbo Series Meters from Badger Meter are the smart choice for larger facilities, including hotels, apartment buildings, commercial and industrial buildings, manufacturing and processing plants, irrigation centers, and refining operations. The no-nonsense performance of this meter will help reduce your day-to-day maintenance and replacement costs, while capturing every billable penny through greater accuracy and efficiency.
You need timely data to make critical and prompt decisions for your community. With a battery-powered Sensus® Smart Gateway Sensor Interface, gas and water utilities can connect to a variety of applications in all locations—even in areas where no power or land-based communications are available.
The E-Series® Ultrasonic Plus with integrated shutoff valve has a patented flow restriction valve that supports open, closed and partial closed settings. It's permanent seal maximizes field life through a patent pending magnetic coupled valve. With a flexible, modular design, you can install the meter now and install the valve in the field later. The valve actuation and management is controlled through BEACON® AMA software.
DESIGN
The water utility industry is changing as the cost of treating and delivering water is constantly rising. Utilities need to be more efficient while utilizing fewer resources. Increased consumer awareness and higher water bills must be met with responsive customer service. Information is being demanded to analyze billing reads and consumption patterns. Large end-users are looking for techniques to assist with conservation and cost controls. Clearly, demands upon water industry professionals are increasing.
Positive displacement water meter with Sensus® Electronic Register+™.
Sensus accuSTREAM meters consist of three basic components: maincase, measuring chamber and sealed register. Maincases (including the bottom plate) are made of composite material with externally-threaded spuds. Registers are housed in a bonnet of synthetic polymer. Measuring chambers are of Rocksyn®, a corrosion-resistant, tailored thermoplastic material formulated for long-term performance and especially suitable for aggressive water conditions. The accuSTREAM can be installed horizontally.
Serving just over 16,000 residents in eastern Texas, the Robertson County Water Supply Corporation (RCWSC) operates a small rural water system with five water plants, four wells, one booster pump station, and approximately 350 miles of PVC pipe. In December of 2014, their systems integrator, Express Electric, recommended that they adopt VTScada software from Trihedral to remotely monitor and control their plants.
As technology solutions drive low-cost access to increasing volumes of critical data, Andrew Reeks, Business Manager for the Water Sector at Siemens Industry and Oliver Grievson, Flow Compliance & Regulatory Efficiency Manager at Anglian Water Services, highlight some of the key data collection questions UK water companies need to be thinking about.
The water burbling down the rural hillside, nurturing the thick foliage, certainly looked like a stream.
Water and wastewater networks are inherently geospatial, comprising interconnected assets that are often underground, buried beneath urban and rural communities.
The likelihood of a successful cyber attack against the water and wastewater industry is a direct result of a growing threat landscape. Without appropriate cybersecurity in place, anyone with malicious intent could access the network and contaminate or cease the treatment and distribution of water.
Every time a pump or valve is operated, potentially dangerous transients are introduced in your water distribution or wastewater system. Unchecked, transients can have catastrophic consequences on your pipes and equipment, operators, and customers.
Protecting coastal cities through accurate flood prevention solutions.
Trimble Telog offers the industry’s leading remote data acquisition system including the most comprehensive family of battery powered, environmentally rugged wireless monitors available from any single supplier.
Utilities and engineering firms around the world trust WaterCAD as a reliable decision-support tool for their infrastructure. Design new water systems and manage existing water networks effectively to reduce disruption risks and energy use.
The simplicity of the compact, battery-powered Telog HPR-31 enables you to put it to work within minutes of unpacking. Once installed, the Telog HPR-31 measures water pressure at user programmable rates up to four samples per second with its internal pressure transducer. You can determine how often such data is summarized for reporting. The recorder computes any combination of minimum, average and maximum pressure measurement at each interval according to your selection of statistics and recording intervals. Recorded data may be gathered via an RS-232 connector using a laptop.
Positive displacement water meter with Sensus® Electronic Register+™.
Sensus accuSTREAM meters consist of three basic components: maincase, measuring chamber and sealed register. Maincases (including the bottom plate) are made of composite material with externally-threaded spuds. Registers are housed in a bonnet of synthetic polymer. Measuring chambers are of Rocksyn®, a corrosion-resistant, tailored thermoplastic material formulated for long-term performance and especially suitable for aggressive water conditions. The accuSTREAM can be installed horizontally.
Improved water reliability and lifecycle costs through total control of a one hundred mile transfer system.
Our Ovation™ SCADA solution provides effective management of wastewater collection and water distribution systems. Our SCADA strategies and architecture offer safe, cost-effective, and reliable control over plant processes. Implemented as either a standalone server or incorporated with Ovation control and information technology, our SCADA solution ensures continuous monitoring and control of plant operations.
Keeping an eye on what happens with domestic oil and gas regulation is a bit like herding cats. We’ve seen encouraging progress on air quality issues related to oil and gas, but an equally critical front that’s seen major action is protection of our land and water resources.
Even as the drinking water crisis draws more attention, the true impact of PFAS exposure may be largely underestimated, necessitating louder calls for action.
When it comes to answering questions about whether the oil and gas industry’s wastewater can be safely reused for other purposes, like food crops, livestock, or even drinking water, there are a number of other serious factors to be considered.
After the Supreme Court, in its 2006 Rapanos v. United States decision, admonished the U.S. EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to once and for all come up with an acceptable definition of “waters of the United States,” which is the linchpin for all regulation under the Clean Water Act, the agencies, nine years later, finalized regulations redefining that term in their 2015 Rule.
Fresh water is the most important resource for human life on earth. People can survive far longer without food than without water, and virtually all of our food sources require fresh water to grow or create.
The cities of Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin, and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa reservation are all situated at the western end of Lake Superior, along the St. Louis River where it flows into the lake.
When the California hexavalent chromium maximum contaminant level (MCL) comes back in 2019, treatment technology improvements will have already significantly lowered the cost of compliance.
If lead is found in drinking water, it is important to identify where it is coming from within the water system — that means taking samples at every stage, from the distribution system all the way to the plumbing system inside the home, also known as premise plumbing.
Carl Alexander, the GIS Director for White House Utility District describes how the utility integrated and used data from the PI System and ArcGIS to recover $900,000 in water being lost through leaks and reduced data prep time from 6 hours to ten minutes.
Thames Water focuses on extracting value from specific combinations of structured and unstructured business data together with real-time operational data provided by Thames' PI System from across more than 3000 plant and 140,000 km of water and sewerage networks.
Matthew Au of Las Vegas Valley Water District describes using AF Transformer to speed up AF structure creation to build a better database.
Dr. Francisco Castillo speaks on their FIELD MOUS system (Field MOnitoring User System), where a PI System acts as a repository of technical data into which different departments plug their data, and other departments access it to fit their particular needs.
Colorado Springs Utilities internal customers can see lab results more quickly and as a result are reducing costs by optimizing their facilities by 30%.
Vermont’s senate has passed a bill that sets a stricter standard for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) contamination in drinking water.
The world is facing unprecedented water challenges brought on by population growth, urbanization and shrinking fresh water supplies. Millions of people lack access to clean drinking water.
A city in Washington State has agreed to settle a lawsuit with a former employee who accused its public utility of encouraging a workplace hostile to women.
Five safe water systems and seven Bleach Makers from the U.S.-based organization WaterStep are being deployed to Malawi after disastrous flooding and a powerful cyclone caused massive destruction.
NACE International, The Corrosion Society and SSPC: The Society for Protective Coatings, two non-profit professional associations in the field of corrosion and coating standards, training, and certification, have initiated exploratory discussions about synergistic opportunities that may exist between the two organizations.
Emerson, a global technology and engineering leader, announced recently it received the industry’s first ISASecure System Security Assurance (SSA) Level 1 certification for cybersecurity.
Schneider Electric, the leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, has entered into a global partnership with Vericlave, a leading cybersecurity technology provider.
The City of San Diego recently contracted the San Diego based remote-sensing data company, Utilis, to conduct a pilot study survey of the city’s drinking water distribution system as part of their innovation exploration program.
Even though a local water treatment facility was closed more than two decades ago, a city in Indiana is paying more than $500,000 to maintain it due to a dangerous leak.
Evoqua Water Technologies, an industry leader in mission critical water treatment solutions, will celebrate World Water Day by shining a spotlight on the myriad ways clean water enriches modern life.
SWDInvest.com, the energy industry's first acquisition and syndication platform specifically focused on the growing oilfield water management sector, announces upcoming launch.
The global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services, recently launched the Ecolab Smart Water Navigator, a free online tool to help businesses throughout the world improve water management at their facilities in the face of growing global water scarcity.
