Emerging Technologies Scoping Study for Process Optimization Tools for the Water Supply Industry
Project Number PGE 0804 Organization PG&E End-use Plug Load Sector Industrial Project Year(s) 2008 - 2008Project Summary
In recent years, water utilities have benefited greatly from the adoption of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems to improve process quality and reliability. Though SCADA systems also can improve energy efficiency, most water utilities currently do not use these systems to achieve energy efficiency gains specifically. Instead, energy efficiency typically is just a by-product of process improvement. Furthermore, the operation of many SCADA systems still is done manually by operations staff rather than automatically by the systems, which limits the energy efficiency gains. As a result, emerging automated SCADA systems offer the potential for significant energy efficiency gains in the water utility industry.
The project objectives were to identify controls and software that have the potential to improve the efficiency of water supply operation significantly. Of particular interest to PG&E were software add-on tools for existing SCADA systems and new integrated controls packages with automated process optimization capabilities. Additionally, PG&E was interested in identifying specific field assessment opportunities at Bay Area water supply operations.
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