The $100 Billion Crisis: How Digital Water Technology Cuts Costs While Rates Soar 53%

Not only are rates going up but there is a still a growing divide in water funding. Depending on the year and sources (AWWA, ASCE, EPA) there is between a 60 and 100 billion dollars a year GAP in funding for water utilities.

What will be the eventual resolution when household bills collide with utility needs? We can speculate but I would rather focus on what we can control.

Thankfully, digital water technology offers more cost-control options than ever before. Modern sensors, automation, and AI aren’t just nice-to-haves, they’re financial survival tools.

5 PROVEN WAYS DIGITAL WATER TECHNOLOGY CUTS COSTS

This is not an exhaustive list, but there are five trends we are seeing more and more utilities utilize to control their system and costs.

1. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)

This includes moving to a fixed network to read your water meters. Typically radio or cellular depending on the utility needs. This saves valuable time from manually reading meters and allows the staff to focus on the more critical activities.

But here’s where digital water technology really shines: This new technology also unlocks the ability to provide daily usage and feedback to the utility users. So instead of a bill shock after 30-60 days of a water leak in their home, they can now get a text or email the same day to fix the issue. Estimates vary but many utilities see a 10% savings in water consumption because users can see their hourly or daily usage. The EPA has a good overview of the benefits. https://www.epa.gov/watersense/advanced-metering-infrastructure

Implementation Tip – Consider AMI technology with advanced sensors such as pressure, water quality, and leak detection. Your water operations team will thank you later.

2. Water District Metering Areas (DMAs)

Many US utilities are very interconnected for pressure and fire flow reasons. Digital water technology enables modern in-line metering that tracks flow without compromising pressure or fire flow capacity. Is your utility 500 miles of pipeline as one large pressure zone? If you break that down into 10 districts of 50 miles each that enables your operators to become more efficient with tracking down water loss and pressure issues.

Implementation Tip – Start with the easy areas on the outskirts of the city. American downtowns are typically a gird and require lots of meters to create DMAs.

3. Operational Software and Data Integrations

Traditional SCADA is used for plants, work order management is used for operations, and GIS is used for engineering and planning. Digital water technology platforms are now integrating these siloed systems, from enterprise solutions by ESRI and Microsoft to specialized water-tech startups.

Implementation Tip – Don’t fall prey to the sales pitch, make sure they have water specific data and software experience not just industrial data and software experience. I once had someone try to sell me on using AI to control water loss, but they had never heard of the AWWA water loss standards…not a good sign.

4. Real Time Control and Automation Systems

Sensor and battery advances mean digital water technology is no longer confined to treatment plants. Adding pressure, flow, water quality sensors along with automated valves and controls enables you to proactively control the system. Low pressure in one area? No worries, the pressure sustaining valves can isolate the issue. What about old water causing quality issues? Water quality autosamplers and auto-flushers can automatically flush those lines for your cleaning them out without having to physically roll a truck with operators.

Implementation Tip – It’s better to overshoot on sensors and data collection than undershoot. You can always scale the decisions and automations back. It’s hard to go back and get a second chance to get the data.

5. Predictive Maintenance and AI Support

All equipment and pipelines are subject to failure. Digital water technology with embedded sensors and robotic inspection enables continuous condition assessment, monthly, daily, or even real-time monitoring depending on criticality. This enables a utility to track each component and utilize AI to predict its future point of failure.

Implementation Tip – Do a risk-based analysis first. The classical matrix of more likely and most impactful to determine what equipment to monitor. If a 2 hp pump or 4-inch waterline fails, does it really matter? Likely not. However, the failure of a 250 HP pump or 24-inch waterlines serving the airport would be.

YOUR NEXT MOVE

If you are already using these systems in your utility, great! Please make sure to share the results and how that is impacting your utility with others so we can lean and advance the industry together.

If you are not using these systems yet, why not? Is that because there is a knowledge gap at all the options? Or an implementation gap to deploy that into your team?

Many utilities are funding success by setting up their own innovation teams. Others are partnering with technology and engineering firms such as Infrasync to help them move forward.

A Challenge for Water Engineers and Designers

Are you incorporating digital water technology into your designs to save clients’ capital and operating expenses? Or are you passively defaulting to 20th-century approaches that perpetuate the financial crisis?

Your next specification decision could save your client millions or lock them into decades of unnecessary costs.

Ready to Build Your Digital Water Strategy?

The funding gap isn’t shrinking. Rates can’t keep climbing forever. But digital water technology can help you do more with less, starting today.

Know someone facing these challenges? Forward this to them.