CHALLENGE
Mitigating non-revenue water (NRW) challenges has taken an increasing role in water utilities over the past several years. There is a saying in the water industry that ‘what gets measured gets managed’ and the American Water Works Association has recommended water utilities rely on actionable performance indicators to meet the challenges brought on by real losses and apparent losses resulting in underbilling.
The value of real-time accurate data such as delivered by Trimble’s digital water technology has been a useful tool for water utilities in that regard.
In recent years, non-revenue water loss has been on the radar of Brett Perry, a water treatment superintendent in El Dorado, Kansas, which supplies water to 40,000 people, including 13,000 in the city of El Dorado, with the remaining being in rural water districts and outlying areas.
“I've been here about 20 years, so I like to pick up projects that pique my interest and can benefit the taxpayers overall and be a steward of the water,” says Perry. “I had always been interested in water loss, because that's revenue loss.”
After learning more about water metering and water auditing at a Kansas Rural Water Association conference, Perry shared his knowledge with his team and suggested they look at the top 25 water users to identify water loss.
“The top 25 water users typically use 90 percent of the water,” he says. “I knew a fixed based meter read system was not really feasible for the city because the payback for a $1.5 million project on household meters was not going to pay for itself very quickly.”
After he identified the top 25 water users, Perry began researching water meters that would provide the accuracy and flexibility the city needed, ultimately settling on an electromagnetic mag meter.
SOLUTION
After identifying the mag meter that would best serve the city’s water needs, Perry started looking into remote telemetry technologies. Perry turned to the R.E. Pedrotti company, which provides municipal water and wastewater technology sales, engineering, service and support.
“They recommended Trimble’s Telog products to us because of their proven track record,” Perry notes. “They do a lot of SCADA and electronic technology and told us a lot of utilities are moving to Trimble.”
In 2017, El Dorado began deploying Trimble’s Telog Ru-32mA units, with 20 of them now in service.
The Telog Ru-32mA is a battery-powered wireless eight channel recording telemetry unit (RTU) for underground monitoring and ideal for use in harsh environments. It can be supplied with one or two pressure sensors and can interface up to two digital inputs (pulse and/or event), one 4-20mA current loop from a process instrument, one analog voltage or potentiometer input, and two additional inputs to capture the encoded register reading of single or dual water meters such as master meters and compound meters.
The RTU utilizes cellular technology to enable unmanned monitoring of remote sites as well as instant updates and alarm notifications. Data collection can be configured to the needs of an end user.
“The Trimble Telog units cover a gauntlet of different tasks,” says Perry. “They have the ability to read pressure, flow and gallons.”
BENEFITS
As with other end users, Perry and his team have found the Telog Ru-32mA units to be invaluable in identifying NRW losses.
“Because we went with a mag meter, which is more accurate than the traditional mechanical meters, we don’t have to send people out to get reads on those meters,” says Perry. “They can be acquired from the cloud through Trimble Unity remote monitoring software at City Hall. There’s a cost benefit there in the ability to get all those reads to come to City Hall. We can pull them out within 30 minutes and have all of those values.”
“You can go online and print from 12 a.m. on the first of the month to 12 a.m. on the 31st of the month and get an exact daily read and overall sum of water use for that month. People don't have to climb down into a meter pit, which is not that safe nowadays.”
One of the city’s largest water users has two meters and uses about 1.6 billion gallons a year. Through El Dorado’s new approach to NRW, the city has seen a 10 to 20 percent increase in water revenue.
In one of the older meters the city pulled out, the lines were full of mud. Upgrading the meter enabled the city to net an additional $100,000 a year in water revenue.
"Another mechanical meter we pulled out had a piece of duct tape in the veins and that was causing an under-read," says Perry. "overall, that one is going to net another $5,000 per month. I have calculated that overall, this project is estimated to generate about another quarter of a million dollars worth of revenue per year."
Perry acknowledges that in addition to the increased revenue, the overriding value is increased accuracy in water loss numbers.
“Water that was not being taken into account is now taken into account,” he says. “So my water loss is maybe five percent now instead of 10 percent because I'm netting another hundred million gallons of water that wasn't being accounted for.”
Perry says he plans to add 10 more Trimble Telog units to cover the top 25 users and beyond.
Ultimately, the mag meter and Trimble Telog Ru-32mA deployment has helped Perry meet his objectives on behalf of the city of El Dorado.
“I’m always interested in things that can increase revenue and benefit the taxpayers,” he reiterates.
