The ROI and improved performance are huge!

 

The astute buyer does not need to be reminded of the finite

nature of water resources, droughts and scarcity of supply, aging

infrastructure, rising costs and operations risks.  These buyers

know their business environment and are constantly aware of the

ecological and market fundamentals of water.  Less certain is how to acquire the information needed to manage water supply, spending and risk.

Whether you are a large or small water user, the answer is smart water.  The business case is compelling for investing in Smart Water to look after your assets, operations and money.  Smart water technologies deliver huge savings on operations performance, enhance energy efficiency, boost labor productivity and achieve high returns on investment. Smart water technologies are an alternative to heavy capital and operational expenditures, and the risk profile of smart water is significantly lower.

 
The drivers of achieving huge returns on smart water are fundamentally related to Big Data, analytics and business intelligence to inform decision making. The tools are sensors to collect data on water operations; telemetry to digitize and enable the storage the vast quantities of information; artificial intelligence and analytics to recognize patterns and make sense of the data; and dashboards to report, optimize and control the water system.  As any good business operator and investor knows, smart decisions are informed by data, support learning and sound warnings/alarms of impeding risks and failure.  The so-called “pump to failure” strategy of well owners is often advocated in the absence of critical real time information about their operating environment, but the business strategy is far less tenable when the asset owners have rich data to continuously optimize their operations, improve performance and prolong the life and returns on their water assets. Is your well at risk of cavitation at a crucial time of water demand?  Without smart equipment, data analytics, and business intelligence, how can you know?

 
At this point you should be asking to see the data.  Every asset has its unique life cycle, but large samples of data from smart systems can inform us of the bounded expectations of performance.  The Sensus Water 20/20 White Paper is a valuable starting point to understand the value added from smart water equipment: the study is based on in-depth interviews and comprehensive surveys with 182 global water utilities and analysis of their operations and budgets.  The analysis found up to $12.5 billion in annual savings from smart systems.

 

• Asset management tools can result in a 15% percent savings on capital expenditures by strategically directing investment and prolonging life cycles. 

• Better informed and managed operations and maintenance can be expected to return up to 20% savings in labor, vehicle efficiency and overall productivity.

• Reduced energy wastage and more efficient consumption could cut energy costs by up to 20%.

• Improved leakage and pressure management could achieve 30% or more of the smart water savings.

 

Some of the larger utilities and water consumers have adopted smart water systems and invested heavily in IT infrastructure and analysts to support them.  With the advent of IOT, such heavy investment can be avoided by adopting cloud-based asset management and business intelligence systems, such as our UAM Smart Water platform. You own the data and equipment, we manage the security, installation, communications, analytics, business intelligence and control.

 

The huge potential financial impact of a smart water management system is exemplified in the table below. The example is based on an actual water well system in California that UAM installed on a well designed to pump 1,000 gpm, and operating 250 days per year. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
The payback on a modest investment is a robust 5 months, and the capex includes the capitalization of the first year’s smart water system operating costs. As the smart system includes machine learning and artificial intelligence, the progressive accumulation of data over time improves the performance of the smart system and decision making. The cost of maintaining your own smart IT infrastructure and analytics is avoided. 

 

Go to www.uamllc.com and book a demonstration of UAM’s water asset management system. We will show you how to optimize the management of your water assets.