Water & Wastewater Treatment

www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | augusT 2014 | 23 Being able to identify issues in the field where intervention is needed, and speedily deploying the right teams to deal with them, is already driving significant savings for Wessex Water Project focus: Wessex Water Energy Hub • Perspectives: "Considering the huge volume and variety of information available, the Energy Hub goes beyond current methods of energy reporting both within Wessex Water and else- where, particularly when combined with key metrics such as flow rates." Laura Mann, Team leader energy services, Energy accounting team "Pulling all the energy information together gave us a huge amount of data but without the guys in the field having access to this data we were struggling to engage with them in the need to reduce energy consumption. The Energy Hub was borne out of a need to make energy information digestible to them." Catherine Pedder, Energy services manager "Energy needs to be everyone's business so we're spreading the message at Wessex Water by get- ting the right information in front of the right people with the launch of the energy saving dashboards." John Leonard, Energy programme manager to 7pm each day) than for the green in the Wessex region. Avoiding peak tariff periods by pumping water into the distribution system outside peak electricity cost periods, for example, can deliver sig- nificant cost savings to the business. To help operators plan run times the dashboard includes a radial graph with the day divided into half-hourly segments coloured red, amber and green depending on the tariff. To date, DUoS avoidance has saved the com- pany in excess of £300,000. The accuracy of the billing soƒware has also enabled the energy team to identify anomalies in suppliers' bills. This included a failure to model the Triad charge accurately, the correction of which avoided £134,000 of charges over the course of a year. The team also identified that incorrect rates for low voltage power were being applied, which, if leƒ unchanged, would have resulted in £7,500 in increased charg- es. The soƒware also flagged a flaw in the electricity supplier's soƒware, which meant it was not immediately reflecting the one-hour time change at the switch between BST and GMT. "Due to the level of accuracy of the soƒware and detail applied by the ac- counting team, Wessex Water is oƒen the only customer able to bring these anomalies to the power supplier's at- tention," explains Mann. The billing soƒware has even had an impact on the cost of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) for Wessex Water, where the use of more accurate data has enabled £100,000 to be shaved from the CRC cost to the company. It will also be useful in deal- ing with the EU's forthcoming Energy Saving Opportunities Scheme (ESOS), a directive which makes it mandatory for large organisations to carry out, and report on, energy audits. In parallel with the work on billing, Wessex Water is able to monitor sites and individual assets using complex calculation engines. Information is collated from 1,700 sites and 5,000 individual drives allowing accurate benchmarking, forecasting and excep- tion reporting. The pump telemetry tool alone saved more than £6,000 between November 2013 and March 2014 by identifying continuously run- ning pumps. At one sewage pumping station, for example, the system identified a problem when the specific energy of the site's pumps exceeded a predeter- mined threshold. This was found to be the result of worn impellers on two of the site's three pumps, which were subsequently refurbished. As a result, the intervention and improvement in pump efficiency on this site alone is estimated to have saved Wessex Water £3,000 a year. "Our increased use of monitoring and targeting is building up a system that identifies and main- tains efficiencies," explains Leonard. Further savings are expected now that the interactive dashboards are being rolled-out across the operations team under a six-month programme. To ensure the team gets the most from the system, the roll-out is being accompanied by regular visits from the energy team to resolve any queries and to ensure the system is being used effectively to save energy. For further reading on the energy/ water nexus visit wwtonline.co.uk • Innovations The billing, monitoring and targeting, and pump telem- etry systems are all excel- lent information sources when viewed individually, however it is the integration of these individual systems into a single user interface – the dashboard – that will deliver industry-leading accuracy and usability that will increase the number of potential opportunities for energy saving.

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