Measuring changes in water consumption can be a tricky business. Most homes in the United States have only a single water meter that is read bi-monthly. This makes it challenging to determine changes in consumption patterns from period to period, or to identify what approaches to encouraging water-use efficiency are actually most effective.
[Read more…] about Reliably Measuring Water Savings
The Value of Water Coalition is launching a national advocacy campaign today, Tuesday October 6th, called Imagine A Day Without Water. The goal of the campaign is to not only educate people about the value of water, but to drive changes in water use behavior to create more resilient and sustainable water systems for our collective future.
Here at WaterSmart, we thought for a long-time about what a day without water might look like, and how WaterSmart could contribute to the dialog in a unique manner that is consistent with our mission. What we ended up with was a slightly different take than what might be expected from the campaign topic.
[Read more…] about Imagining A Day Without Water
Water utilities are increasingly evaluating new metering technologies to reduce non-revenue water, drive down operational costs of data collection, and gain greater visibility into meter asset health. From the utility’s perspective, these are all sound business reasons for making what is often a substantial investment in advanced metering infrastructure (AMI).
But how do these investments help the residential customer? Are water prices reduced as a result of these utility cost reductions? Unfortunately not. Utilities have to recover the cost of the hardware investment and many districts are not generating sufficient revenue to cover their basic operational expenses, let alone enough to make long-term investments in new capital projects.
[Read more…] about The Customer Engagement Case for Smart Water Meters
The importance of energy
Nearly every modern convenience is powered by electricity. We expect lights to immediately come on when we flick the switch and we always want our computers and mobile phones to boot up when we turn them on. If we don’t have access to power, our lives creep to a virtual halt. We can’t work. We can’t cook. We can’t do any of the things that we consider part of normal, modern day life. Energy powers our economy and is correlated with trillions of dollars in global economic activity. No wonder media organizations devote so many resources to covering the energy industry. It’s incredibly important. People need to know what is happening with energy production, consumption, and the impacts that energy has on our environment and our daily lives. It makes sense.
