Municipal Water Energy Efficiency

Are you:

1. A municipal water distribution system employee?

2. A municipal official?

3. A concerned citizen?

4. An entrepreneur looking for business opportunities?

5. A student writing a term paper?

4. looking for business opportunities in energy conservation & carbon credits. i know about energy efficient pumps, VFD on pumps to control pressure but any thing beyongd this. i h heard a lot about leakage as one of the major culprits in loss of water as well energy but for underground water network how does one do it? specially with node metering availability. are there any gadgets to survey ( like ultrasonic etc to identify the exact location of under ground leaking pipe? som

Go for VFDs for all the pumps, prefarably with closed loop control (with process feedback).

Go for energy saving faucets,showers,urinals and recycling.

Water service companies typically do surveys on a regular basis for water leaks, because it not only wastes energy, it can undermine roads, foundations, embankments etc. etc., and they get hit with liability. They use several techniques, one being acoustic where they connect in various spots and listen for the sounds of leaks, narrowing the field down until they find it with a ground microphone. Another is pressure drops in networked meters as you alluded to and they also just use their SCADA system to look at metered volume flowing into an area and comparing that to metered use from all the connected clients. Any difference means a leak, then they start the other processes to find it.

There are plenty of existing leak detection contractors out there now, you could certainly jump on the band wagon. But the energy aspect of it is relatively insignificant to them, the existence of a leak has far more grave consequences.

Water delivery energy costs have mostly to do with the cost of pumping, which is affected by head, pressure drops and use volume. Head is not usually something anyone can do anything about, pressure drops are inherent in the delivery system (bends, restrictions etc.) so the only real controllable aspect is use volume. Hence the comments on low flow shower heads, efficient washers, low water landscaping etc.