The Value of Advanced Smart Metering in the Management of Urban Water Supply Services
Abstract
This work intends to outline the experience of the implementation and further exploitation of an extensive network of smart meters (SM) in the city of Valencia by Aguas de Valencia, the water utility that offers water supply and sanitation services to the city of Valencia and its metropolitan area. Valencia has become the first large city in Europe fully equipped with a point-to-point fixed network of SM (currently with more than 430,000 units, about 90% of the meters of the city). The shift towards a water supply management system based on SM is a complex process that entails changes and impacts on different management areas of the water supply organization. A new data management and processing platform has been developed and is already proving notable benefits in the operation of the system. For example, a tool allows to automatically issue and manage work orders when abnormalities such as internal leaks (constant consumption) or meter alarms are detected. Another tool has been developed to reduce levels of non-revenue water by continuously balancing supply and demand in district metered areas. Improving leak detection and adjusting pressure levels has significantly increased the efficiency of the water distribution network. Finally, a service of post-meter leak detection has been also implemented. But the SM also contribute to improve demand management. The customers now receive detailed information on their water consumption, valuable for improving household water management and assessing the value of water conservation strategies. SM are also key tools for improving the level of understanding of demand patterns. Users have been categorized into different clusters depending in their consumption patterns characteristics. Within the EU SmartH2O project, a high resolution and frequency monitoring of residential uses has been conducted in a selected sample of households for a precise disaggregation of residential end-uses. The disaggregation of end-uses allows for a better characterization and modelling of residential water demand, and, ultimately, designing efficient user-oriented water management strategies.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFM.H44F..06G
- Keywords:
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- 1834 Human impacts;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCESDE: 6344 System operation and management;
- POLICY SCIENCES