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Water Flow and Load Disaggregation Monitoring

Residential Water Usage

Understanding the water usage patterns of residential homeowners is beneficial to utilities responsible for managing their water supply. Aside from identifying and trending the times of household peak water usage, utilities can provide useful information to homeowners to assist in reducing water usage or recognizing appliances that are not performing optimally. Capturing this data in a simple and efficient manner, without involving or tasking the homeowner, can be challenging. Enetics' EM-6470 load management (NILM) systems may be the answer.

Load disaggregation is the detection and identification of water usage at the individual appliance level. Imagine providing homeowners with detailed water usage information beyond their typical monthly bill; such as how much, when, and where water was used, appliance by appliance. Successfully identifying individual appliance load patterns in a non-intrusive manner is beneficial to the homeowner; what are the major water bill contributors, leak detection, and appliances approaching their end-of-life identified. This is disaggregation.

Dissecting the home’s main water supply electronically into flow rate, flow volume and time-of-usage reveals a wealth of information following disaggregation. Having installed thousands of non-intrusive load monitoring instruments globally across the electrical utility industry, Enetics has significant expertise in load disaggregation algorithm development. Similar event detection and identification methodologies apply to residential and commercial water usage.

The Enetics Residential Water Disaggregation System utilizes a flexible SQL database platform, the PL-5380 wireless data recording system, and a pulse-enabled flow meter. Pretty simple.

A pulse-enabled water flow meter, installed by the utilities in the residential water supply line, provides data to the PL-5380 wireless recorder. Electronic pulses, scaled to represent the amount of water flowing through the flowmeter, are collected and transmitted to the cloud by the PL-5380 recorder. Enetics’ Enterprise Software algorithms then disaggregate the data, revealing individual water consumption trends for the major home appliances.

The Enetics SQL database platform provides several levels of backend support and analysis ranging from simple data collection and management, to secure data hosting and cloud management, fully automated disaggregation and utility-formatted tabular and graphical report generation services.

Utilities operating their own SCADA or Enterprise System software can benefit from the Enetics SQL database used as a data manager and repository; controlling recorder configurations, code control, and data downloads. Final data disaggregation and report generation can then be performed by external systems such as neural networking engines or in-house developed systems.

No one would ever recommend mixing water with electricity. However, the symbiotic relationship between these two resources, when exploited, can increase the accuracy of appliance identification efforts. Monitoring whole-house consumption patterns of water and electricity, correlating them in time and performing an integrated disaggregation can yield exceptional identification results, beyond those of water only activities.

Enetics provides a suite of wireless, non-intrusive hardware and software products used together or stand-alone to capture both water and electrical power consumption at the resolution levels you require in an easy, affordable way.


How Monitoring Home Consumption Patterns of Water and Electricity Works