Water Energy Nexus AMI Pilot Final Report

This project evaluates whether the introduction of high-resolution AMI-dependent household water information to single-family residential consumers results in water, electricity, or gas savings through direct or behavioral changes at the household. This was accomplished by designing and performing a field experiment that allowed for the measurement of the effect of advanced meter install and AMI-dependent communications on residential water, electricity, and gas use at the highest available resolutions. It was found that communications resulted in no statistically significant reductions to onsite household electricity or gas use but did result in the reduction of household water use and upstream, indirect energy use from water delivery.

The study identified that the expected benefits from communicating high-resolution water use to residential consumers at the East Bay Municipal Utility District as a reduction to household water use by 5.17 gallons per day per household, and indirect, embedded energy savings from water treatment and distribution between 0.0119 to 0.0353 kilowatt-hours per day per household, depending on the energy intensity of the water system. Scaling this treatment to the residential households throughout California, it is anticipated that this treatment would conserve 123,262 million gallons of water and up to 148,171 Megawatt-hours of electricity annually at an operating cost of approximately 17.4 million dollars, not including the cost of replacing meters with modern, high-resolution equipment. Under these conditions, it is anticipated that the AMI-enhanced web portal results in net cost savings to California if deployed broadly.