CLOUD COMPUTING

Iowa City Turns to IT Cloud, Not Rain Clouds, for Improved Water Supply

Alison Diana | Date: 08-12-11 | Comments

Smart meters and smart water grids are delivering improved accuracy and cost savings to utilities.

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Iowa City Turns to IT Cloud, Not Rain Clouds, for Improved Water Supply
Water management and conservation remain a key challenge for many businesses and municipalities. We�ve examined efforts to apply smart practices to improving water usage by public water authorities in Dubuque, Iowa; Washington, D.C.; and Wilmington, N.C., as well as by beverage companies worldwide. Here we take a second look at the efforts in Dubuque, where the situation has gotten more urgent as a regional drought moves into its eleventh month.

As the Midwest and South suffer through more than 10 months of drought, residents of one Iowa city are using cloud technology to preserve water and save money�part of its Smarter Sustainable Dubuque research implemented before the recent dearth of rain made water an even more precious commodity.

Whether they are suffering through a drought or not, more municipalities and households are looking into ways of controlling their water use and rates. After all, the United States is estimated to waste a trillion gallons of water every year on running toilets, dripping faucets and other leaks, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates. That adds up to 10,000 gallons per average American family�or enough water to fill a backyard swimming pool, according to a 2010 article in USA Today.

On average, each American uses approximately 90 gallons of water daily in the home; each U.S. household uses about 107,000 gallons annually--50 percent to 70 percent of which is used on lawns and gardens. Typically, almost 14 percent of the water pouring out of the faucet just runs down the drain, according to APEC Water Systems.

Dubuque, Iowa, wanted to plug this problem.

As part of IBM�s �Smarter Cities� program, Dubuque was able to cut water use by 6.6 percent, and increased leak-detection and response eightfold after implementing the developer�s cloud computing and business analytics technologies, according to IBM. The city measured the impact of the new technology by comparing the consumption of 151 pilot households against a control group of 152 homes that used identical smart meters, but did not have access to the analysis and insights provided by the Water Pilot Study during the nine-week pilot.

As part of this pilot study, smart meters monitored water consumption every 15 minutes, and then relayed that information to the IBM Research Cloud. Data�including weather, household characteristics, and demographics�was analyzed to provide an alert about any potential leaks, and also educate the volunteer families to help them understand their water consumption. Homeowners could see only their data; city managers viewed aggregate information, according to IBM.

Increasingly, utilities such as water providers and electric suppliers are rolling out smart meters to their customers. These devices deliver cost savings to the utility, since meter readers no longer need to leave their vehicles to read meters, and to customers, who get real-time pricing and leak-detection. Toronto Hydro, for one, expects to save $33 million on meter readers and collect as much as $24 million that it loses from inaccurate billing when it installs a new smart water metering system, reported PlanetGreen.com in 2010.

The smart water grid is expected to become a $16.3 billion market by 2020, according to Lux Research.
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