Technologies to Address Worsening Drought

At Microsoft Ignite this week, technologies are being showcased that are driving enterprise forward - and helping to solve critical, real-world problems, including this innovative approach to addressing California's worsening drought

To help manage the situation, MRWPCA is turning to theInternet of Things(IoT), outfitting its facilities with connected sensors and transforming the data they generate into insight that will help optimize the distribution of reclaimed water among farmers and everyday users — and help keep its cost reasonable by minimizing the energy involved.

A dynamic environment

MRWPCA operates a wastewater facility that recycles water to irrigate crops across the southern Monterey Bay region. Between its main plant and 25 pumping stations, MRWPCA treats 20 million gallons of water per day.

Whenever demand for water exceeds the capacity of the plant and its storage reservoirs, wells must be tapped, requiring the operation of enormous pumps that consume huge amounts of electricity. Similar pumps are required to move water among various locations and processes throughout the facility. All of this makes MRWPCA a major consumer of electricity that is subjected to certain punitive tariffs. "At times just firing up a single pump can cost the agency thousands of dollars," says Tom Kouretas, an engineer who focuses on energy issues at the facility.

MRWPCA is able to mitigate some of the costs associated with its power consumption by moving water at night when possible, and supplementing with solar energy during daylight. However, the water has to be there, 24/7, and solar energy is a dynamic resource that fluctuates continually depending on weather patterns and time of day.

"Trying to understand how best to optimize these processes and stay below peak energy demands means that the agency must understand when we are using power, what the price is on the grid, what the total load is of each process, how to distribute loads among various pumps, and how much the solar production contributes to power availability in the moment," Kouretas says.

A next-generation solution

Factor in the MRWPCA's fundamental task of tracking and managing the intake, treatment, demand for and distribution of water, and the challenges of understanding the whole picture become overwhelming. All these variables, spread out across the entire region, are too much for human operators to track in real time.

By accessing data from a variety of sensors and combining it in the cloud with information on pricing, power consumption, water usage and more, the MRWPCA can obtain real-time insights about whether and where to push that next button, and how much it might cost.

To build this new IoT-based solution, MRWPCA partnered withCandi ControlsandMC Engineering. The partners are installing low-cost, industrial-class IoT devices across Monterey Water's existing plant, supplementing a traditional supervisor control and data acquisition (SCADA) system designed in the late 1980s.

"While SCADA systems have worked well for the industry historically, they involve very expensive equipment," says Mark Carey, president of MC Engineering. "Because of this, they have never been deployed widely enough to get a truly holistic set of data. Today's lightweight, intelligent sensors are able to communicate over a variety of networks, at a fraction of the complexity and cost."

In fact, the new system was installed in about 30 days at a total cost approximately 80 percent less than more traditional options, such as extending the existing SCADA system and then monitoring suspect processes.

Candi Controls usesAzure Event Hubsto normalize the data and feed it intoAzure Stream Analytics, allowing them to harvest an immense stream of information every day that is creating real visibility into the amount of energy that different processes are using. WithPower BIfor the presentation layer, Candi and MC are able to provide a rich monitoring and demand management dashboard that offers Monterey executives a clear picture of their operations, and helps them understand what could be improved, and why.

With the additional benefit of being able to evolve the implementations quickly and easily and add new capabilities without additional overhead, the agency figures its return on investment with the IoT-based approach will be many times greater than it could be with the legacy SCADA solution; with recommended process improvements and qualification for a better energy tariff, Candi Controls projects over 100 percent ROI within one year.

"By combining Azure Stream Analytics, Power BI and Candi's unifying IoT Platform, we are able to quickly and cost-effectively connect and present big data from industrial IoT devices for remote monitoring, analysis and control," says Steve Raschke, CEO of Candi Controls. "This powerful combination of cloud and edge technologies provides unparalleled optimization tools for utilities like MRWPCA, and their vendors and customers."

Source: Microsoft

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• Data Management