Leveraging Real-time Data for Intelligent, Utility Management

Presented at the 2014 ISA Water/Wastewater and Automatic Controls Symposium

Crowne Plaza Orlando-Universal Hotel, Orlando, Florida, USA – Aug 5-7, 2014 – www.isawwsymposium.com

Leveraging Real-time Data for Intelligent, Utility Management

Gary L.S. Wong OSIsoft, LLC., 777 Davis Street, San Leandro, California, USA

(*correspondence: [email protected] +1-604-760-8487)

KEYWORDS

Decision Support, Real-time Data Management, Operations Data Management System, ODMS, Big Data

ABSTRACT

Instrumentation and automation play a vital role to managing the water industry. These systems

generate vast amounts of data that must be effectively managed in order to enable intelligent decision

making. Time series data management software, commonly known as data historians are used for

collecting and managing real-time information. More advanced software solutions provide a data

infrastructure or utility wide Operations Data Management System (ODMS) that stores, manages,

calculates, displays, shares, and integrates data from multiple disparate automation and business

systems that are used daily in water utilities. These ODMS solutions are proven and have the ability to

manage data from smart water meters to the collaboration of data across third party corporations. This

presentation focuses on practical, utility successes in the water industry where utility managers are

leveraging instantaneous access to data from proven, commercial off-the-shelf ODMS solutions to

enable better real-time decision making. Successes include saving $600,000 / year in water loss control,

safeguarding water quality, saving millions of dollars in energy management and asset management.

Immediate opportunities exist to collaborate and leverage these successful case studies to any water or

wastewater utility in the world.

Introduction

The water industry realizes the need for instrumentation, controls, and automation in order to better

manage their facilities and operations. Utilities may implement and upgrade automation systems at

various facilities at different times when funding is available which can lead to multiple vendor systems.

In addition, information technology business systems to manage assets, financials, geospatial

information, and laboratory information are also required to manage the overall business landscape.

Adding new smart water metering systems increase the complexity as potentially, millions of streams of

raw data need to be managed and used effectively for billing, water loss control, and pressure

management. With the multitude of business and engineering systems, quickly accessing, integrating,

and using the data in a meaningful way to make better business decisions can be very difficult, costly,

and overwhelming. Having fast and easy, instantaneous access to real-time and historical time series

data, decision makers are enabled to make informative decisions based on factual information.

In industry, these systems that manage time series operational data are typically known as data

historians, however, there are varying options and capabilities from home grown systems to

independent vendor commercial off the shelf (COTS) time series solutions. The most advanced systems

are COTS, scalable and have the ability to manage and integrate operational and business data across

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the enterprise regardless of data source; these systems are referred to as Operations Data Management

Systems (ODMS). ODMS not only manages time series big data effectively, but also integrates seamlessly

with relational, business data to add context, see Figure 1. There are thousands of facilities in various

industries worldwide effectively managing and leveraging their operational time series data for business

using ODMS solutions. Recently, “The Cloud” has enabled software, infrastructure, and data as a service

to be provided and exchanged over the internet which can extend the use of ODMS across

organizations. This paper touches upon these advancements, but will focus on the successes of using

ODMS at several water utilities around the world.

Discussion

Several issues arise when managing large volumes of time series data. First of all, data managers and

users must understand and realize this real-time and historical process control data is time series data

which consists of a date, timestamp, and value. This is critical as the appropriate technology should be

used to handle and mange this data. I.e. A time series database solution is ideal for effectively managing

large volumes of time series data, however, many users rely on relational database technologies which

leads to poor performance and excessive system support. Second of all, ease of access and speed of

retrieval of raw and aggregate data greatly decreases as data volumes increase. Third of all, many users

are building their own time consuming and costly data collection, management, and analysis systems

while proven commercial off the shelf software exists that can connect to and manage continuous data

from hundreds of different automation, process control and business systems. Lastly, without the

proper system interfaces and technology, integrating operational time series data and relational

business data into useful information becomes a roadblock to addressing operational business issues.

Figure 1: Real-time Operations Data Management System integrating automation and business systems

data.

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The findings and results of both technical and business successes are examined. For the

technical aspects, the results from two water utilities, Metro Vancouver in Canada and Las Vegas Valley

Water District (LVVWD) from the USA are discussed. In addition to these two utilities, Halifax Water in

Canada, and Water Corporation in Australia are included in the business success results where they use

the data and information from the ODMS for energy management, faster water billing, water loss

control, and utility efficiency are discussed.

Metro Vancouver and LVVWD manage over 200,000 tags or streams of real-time / historical

data which is all time series information generated by their various, process control systems. Both

utilities originally used a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) to manage this data. With

many instrument values being recorded every few seconds, the amount of data became overwhelming

in terms of storage, analysis, management, support, and programming of their RDBMS solutions. The

excessive time required to create reports (which sometimes took weeks to complete) and to access and

analyze data became a roadblock to using the data for decision making as the task to just get data

became a project onto itself. Most of the data was not being used to help better manage the utilities.

Therefore, both utilities switched to a proven COTS ODMS time series infrastructure solution (OSIsoft’s

PI System) and some before and after results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Before and after results of switching to a COTS ODMS time series solution.

Before (RDBMS) After (COTS Time Series)

Data Storage Size (Gigabytes)

Las Vegas Valley Water District 1000 15

Metro Vancouver 100+ 6

Daily Data Loading (minutes)


Metro Vancouver 180 Real-time

Report Query (seconds)


Metro Vancouver 10,000+ 5

Some reports at Metro Vancouver taking days or weeks for a programmer to create were created in

minutes by operations and engineering end users who knew how to use the data to make insightful

decisions to better manage the utility. Users leverage the full granularity of the raw real time data being

collected and from this data, they can create analytical aggregate data such as 5 minute pump speeds or

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flow rates instantaneously. Additionally, the support and maintenance costs dropped by 70% after

switching to the ODMS time series solution.

Leveraging their real-time operations data, Metro Vancouver saves $1.5 million / year on energy

costs at their Annacis Island Wastewater Treatment facility (1050 MLD maximum capacity). This includes

monitoring real-time energy consumption and costs to optimize use of digester gas to power

cogeneration facilities, reducing natural gas consumption to zero, enhancing pump and motor efficiency

(start / stops and pumping strategies), and reducing carbon footprint. Figure 2 displays real-time energy

consumption and optimization at the Annacis Island Waste Water Treatment Plant through an easy to

access web portal page.

Figure 2: Real-time power consumption optimization reducing costs.

In addition, Metro Vancouver leverages their ODMS for managing drinking water quality, storm

sewer overflows, water billing, and utility operations optimization across their water and wastewater

facilities. Their COTS ODMS time-series solution has enabled Metro Vancouver to prevent storm sewer

and wastewater overflows and to speed up their water billing collection which means another $500,000

/ year in interest revenue [1].

At Las Vegas Valley Water District, easily accessible, timely and accurate real-time operational

data has allowed them to make better business decisions in order to manage their entire water

operations from water production and certification to energy and maintenance costs. Las Vegas

monitors real-time water production while minimizing costs and production while meeting the service

demand [2].

Water Corporation in Perth, Australia, manages water across an area of 2.5 million km2 and has

nearly 1000 wastewater pumping stations. Through their ODMS, asset management dashboards use

standardized key performance indicators to forecast and to predict maintenance required. This saves a

considerable amount of money compared to scheduled planned maintenance. Parameters include real-

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time and historical analysis of run-time hours, power load on pumps, start/stops per hour enabling

condition based and predictive maintenance on wastewater pumping stations [3].

At Halifax Water, as a result of its adoption of the IWA/AWWA framework and technology

integration with their ODMS solution, Halifax Water has reduced leakage of potable water from its

distribution system from an Infrastructure Leakage Index (ILI) of 9.0 to 3.0, which means direct savings

of $600,000 per year (savings of ~$2 per person served) [4]. Using the ODMS, Halifax Water has created

a real-time Water Loss Calculator and electronic Whiteboard that provides a dashboard for benchmark

regional (district metered areas) night flows compared to actuals. Figure 3 shows their water loss

calculator that provides the necessary information in real-time to make optimal operating decisions and

identify out of spec flow profiles that may mean a leak.

Figure 3: Real-time water loss calculator.

Water companies like Veolia Eau d’Ile de France in the Paris region are extending their real-time

capabilities by integrating and visualizing their real-time data through Geographic Information Systems.

Through a mobile device, they have the ability to view their water operations geospatially and drill down

into pumping stations and plants to see real-time flows, levels, and performance. Veolia’s successful use

of ODMS and GIS has enabled them to reduce leaks and energy consumption by a further 7% and 6%

respectively [5]. Figure 4 shows Veolia’s unified region through GIS with real-time data and analytics.

Servicing 150,000 people, Moulton Niguel Water District (MNWD) in Southern California is faced

with rising energy costs while still needing to deliver safe, clean drinking water at a minimal cost. Their

operations team focuses on managing energy as a business practice and takes into account real-time

demand charges, pumping efficiency, and optimizing rate schedules to reduce energy costs.

By managing knowledge and investing in automation, MNWD has been able to reduce energy

consumption, however, leveraging their ODMS with a real-time, live energy management report, MNWD

has been able to further reduce pumping energy costs by 15% for their water distribution network. This

translates to a savings of ~$400,000 per year [6].

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MNWD is further leveraging the PI System for dynamic, real-time energy management by

putting some of their largest pumping stations onto demand response programs where their electrical

service can be interrupted (day before notice lead time) which forces them to shift demand during

critical peak pricing or pay 30+ times the regular cost for power.

Figure 4: Real-time energy management decision report.

Incorporating the value chain of water and extending beyond water utilities, major consumers

of water and energy in the industrial and agricultural sector are leveraging ODMS solutions to better

manage their facilities, water, and energy. Collaboration and secure sharing of data between these large

utility consumers and the local water and power utility enable higher efficiency, sustainability, and

conservation. This can be achieved through the cloud and connected services where ODMS solutions

can push or pull data through the cloud to other organizations and ODMS solutions themselves can be

hosted in the cloud to provide data and operations management. See Figure 5.

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Figure 5: ODMS in the cloud connecting and exchanging data and services between organizations.

Major League Baseball’s MLB Green environmental sustainability initiative is focused on helping

its 30 MLB ballparks be more sustainable. Safeco Field and baseball in Seattle is a major city attraction

and one that uses considerable amounts of energy and water for its operations. One of their goals was

to reduce water and energy consumption and Scott Jenkins, VP, Ballpark Operations Seattle Mariners,

states “real-time data drives behavior to reduce consumption and also greens their brand.” By seeing

trends and dashboards, operations found surprising events such as water valves were open causing

water to leak away unused. After the first year, Safeco Field saved $1.6M dollars and signed up another

$1M in corporate sponsorships for sustainability [7]. Figure 5 displays Safeco Field’s real-time utility

usage.

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Figure 5: Safeco Field’s real-time utility management dashboard.

Conclusion

Having reliable and easily accessible data is imperative in making informed decisions to better operate

water utilities and manage the water lifecycle. Using a COTS time series database to collect, manage,

analyze, and present operational time series data has strong advantages to relational database

technologies. However, the most effective ODMS solutions recognize the need for a data infrastructure

that incorporates relational and time series data using the appropriate technologies, thus enabling the

bridging of the Information Technology and Operational Technology worlds. Without easy access to

operations data, whether it is within an organization or across third parties through the internet, it is

difficult to measure performance and to make improvements. It is this key use of appropriate

technology that enables decision makers to leverage operations data for better energy management,

water quality, compliance reporting, and addressing other business issues when running water utilities

and sustainably, managing the entire water lifecycle.

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List of Acronyms:

AWWA..............American Water Works AssociationThe Cloud .........Metaphor for the internet where data, software, and infrastructure is provided as a

service. I.e. Remotely through the internet.CMMS...............Computerized Maintenance Management SystemCOTS.................Commercial Off The ShelfDCS ...................Distributed Control SystemGIS ....................Geographic Information SystemHMI...................Human Machine InterfaceIWA...................International Water AssociationLIMS..................Laboratory Information Management System

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ODMS ...............Operations Data Management SystemRDBMS .............Relational Database Management SystemSCADA ..............Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition

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References

[1] Wong G. “Driving Business Value Across the Enterprise”, Control Magazine, (2006).

[2] Au M. & Rice K. “Historian Facts”, Las Vegas Valley Water District, Las Vegas, (2010).

[3] Scott, I., Wong, G. “Modern Water Manager”, WaterWorld, (2008).

[4] Yates, C., MacDonald, G. “Water Loss Control – Sustainability on Both Sides of the Meter”. Water

Loss Control Report, IWA, Capetown, (2009).

[5] Gallon, G. & Sepehr, M. “Innovation around the PI System: Paris Water Supply”, OSIsoft UC 2014,

San Francisco (2014).

[6] Dees, L., Lawler, L. et al., “Using Operations Knowledge and Real-time Management to Manage

Energy, Reduce Electrical Demand, and Improve Efficiency”, Water Utility Management, (2009).

[7] Boland, N. and Nelson, D. From Major League Baseball Stadiums to Trading Baseball Memorabilia on

eBay: Sustainability Now and Tomorrow, OSIsoft UC ’13, San Francisco, (2013).

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Gary L.S. Wong: Mr. Wong is OSIsoft’s Principal, Global Water Industry and has 18 years of international

experience providing sustainable, strategic and cost-effective business solutions, particularly in the water

industry. Prior to joining OSIsoft, he was the Manager, Corporate Applications at Metro Vancouver and

has also held previous positions in senior management and consulting. Additionally, Mr. Wong has

worked with major international organizations in both the public and private sector on Operations, IT

strategy, planning, sustainability, and engineering. Mr. Wong holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical

Engineering, is registered as a Professional Engineer in Computer Engineering, holds an M.B.A. from the

Queen’s School of Business and is also a Chartered Professional Accountant.

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Leveraging Real-time Data for Intelligent, Utility Management