Iowa Town Installs Smart Water Meters to Save Water and Energy

The city of Dubuque, IA has teamed up with IBM on a project to analyze how smart water meters can help the water utility and its customers detect leaks, improve their understanding of water demand and ultimately conserve water and energy.

Previous smart water metering studies have already shown smart meters to be quite effective in detecting leaks and changing consumers' behavior. A number of major companies - including Oracle, IBM GE, Google and Microsoft - are funding smart metering R&D so the real question isn't if but when we'll start seeing more smart meters monitoring both water and electricity consumption installed.

According to an article, smart water meters have been installed at 300 volunteer residences as part of a public-private partnership between IBM and the city of Dubuque but eventually the entire town will be equipped with smart meters:

The Smarter Sustainable Dubuque Water Pilot Study’s goal is to show how informed and engaged citizens can help make their city sustainable. The study started in September and will run to December, and initial study results will be available by the end of the year.

Initially, 300 volunteer residents will participate. Dubuque is in the process of installing smart water meters throughout the city. Over the next several months, data will be collected and analyzed, providing information and insight on consumption trends and patterns that will enable both the volunteers and city management to conserve water and lower costs.

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IBM Research is using a cloud computing environment to collect and analyze data, said Milind Naphade, program director for Smarter City Services and Smarter Cloud with IBM. “The idea is to validate cloud computing as a mechanism for collecting and managing data and to lower the barrier for entry for cities,” Naphade said.

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand.

IBM has built the IBM Smarter City Sustainability Model, which is a cloud delivered asset that provides the city with an integrated view of its water consumption, and energy management. The system is being piloted in 300 residences throughout the city of Dubuque.

The data being collected will be anonymous and contain no confidential information. In the cloud, the data will be analyzed with triggers to spot potential leaks and anomalies, and help volunteers understand their consumption in greater detail. Volunteers can only view their own consumption habits while city management can see the aggregate data.

An article from the New York Times describes the project in more detail, touching on the potential energy benefits that will surely result:

Many water bills are issued quarterly, so residents may not notice a spike in consumption as a result of leaks or other problems for months. The smart meters in Dubuque, on the other hand, will transmit data on a home’s water use to I.B.M. computers every 15 minutes.

Residents can go to a Web site to monitor their water use.

“Water isn’t generally seen as something of value — even though water managers in 36 states expect to face water shortages in the next few years,” Mr. Naphade wrote. “By providing this level of detailed information to program participants, we can help them really understand where their water is going, and where they can make changes in terms of how and when they use water to reduce the overall amount they’re using on a daily basis.”

Cutting water use also saves the city energy costs as less electricity is needed for pumping, city officials noted.

“What our volunteer households are accomplishing is the first step to understanding waste and ultimately the conservation of valuable resources to sustain life quality for generations to come,” Dubuque’s mayor, Roy D. Buol, said in a statement.

I first clumsily blogged about smart water meters about a year ago when news was coming out about the software that Google and Microsoft were developing to display data from smart electric grids in a way that consumers could understand. After looking into it a bit more, I realized that water use was not mentioned by the developers which prompted me to write a quick message to Google:

The power meter is a really great product but i think it is missing a very important feature. If you really want to design a device that will help us deal with climate change you must integrate data on real-time water usage. Water use - like energy use - goes down when consumers have access to real-time information. Water contains a lot of embedded energy/carbon (see our report, The Carbon Footprint of Water) and more efficient uses of water can significantly reduce GHG emissions. Some states incentivize water conservation to reduce peak energy demand so water usage data can also be used to better manage energy demand.

Two more points: water is proving to be a constraining factor in clean energy development, and, finally, water is the resource through which climate change is being manifest. As we adapt to the inevitable changes already caused by our GHG emissions, managing our water resources will be increasingly critical and difficult.

Athough smart water meters are not as widespread as smart energy meters, taking proactive steps to include water usage in your metering software can help jumpstart smart metering in the water sector and strengthen google.org's efforts to help society grapple with the climate crisis.

I went on to describe in the blog post how:

A single smart water meter installed in a home could provide real-time information on water use and help consumers identify leaks. Although it might be cost prohibitive, I could imagine small meters or flow tracers being placed throughout a home in the water lines leading up to different fixtures and appliances. This information could then tell the consumer how much water was consumed for specific uses and which uses should be targeted for efficiency or conservation efforts. It seems any extra costs might be worth it in regions suffering from severe water shortages.

I never did receive a response to my message from Google, however, it sounds like IBM has already integrated their smart power and water metering technology.

While it is still unclear just how much energy can be saved through smart water meters, we do know that it is substantial. In a later post on a smart water metering study from Oracle, I discussed the energy savings that could be achieved with smart water metering technology:

According to Oracle’s report, the United States could save about 1.3 trillion gallons of water annually by adopting smart water metering technology. Assuming a national average of 1,500 kilowatt hours per million gallons of water delivered, this would equate to a savings of approximately 2 million megawatt hours per year, or enough electricity to power more than 180,000 homes! And that doesn’t include downstream energy savings (the potential savings that would result from reducing the flow to wastewater treatment plants), or the savings from more efficient system operations. Using emissions data from the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalency Calculator, the water savings from smart metering technology would result in greenhouse gas emissions reductions of 1.4 million metric tons per year, equivalent to taking about 270,000 cars off the road.

Indeed, a successful pilot program in California has already found that smart water meters can save energy and detect leaks. Although energy savings weren’t quantified, the study, which was funded by the California Energy Commission, found that at peak times, homeowners with smart water meters used less than half the amount of water as those in the control group, while their total usage ended up being 17% lower overall. Those are some striking numbers, but they are just the tip of the benefits iceberg. The study also found that 30% of household were found to have leaks that lasted 24 hours or more, enabling homeowners or the utility to go out and fix problems that could have otherwise continued wasting days, months or years. As a person involved in the project exclaimed, “We were surprised by the number of people with leaks, and we think this is really something we want to follow up.”

Despite all of the benefits of smart water meters, the same study from Oracle found that smart water meters have been slow to roll out, with only 14% of water utilities currently implementing smart meter projects. But there’s a silver lining in that 62% of water managers surveyed by Oracle were already convinced that smart meters could help them detect leaks and promote conservation among customers.