Water & wastewater utilities can improve efficiency using Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies. In a WaterWorld article, Leveraging IIoT for Energy Management, Emerson’s Peter Gabor participated in a question & answer session to share his thoughts on how these utilities are incorporating IIoT.
Peter noted that energy costs are a big part of total operating costs and driving down energy consumption is an opportunity where IIoT technologies can be applied.
When looking for opportunities to improve energy usage, he explained:
For energy usage we often recommend customers start at the incoming power source and work toward the individual assets. Monitoring switchgear is often the easiest as most equipment has this information readily available, but it provides no granularity of the downstream devices being powered. Monitoring individual equipment provides the visibility on usage and efficiency degradation over time.
IIoT sensors lower the installation economic barriers to enable more equipment to be monitored. But, it’s important that transmission of this additional data be focused.
The data needs to be presented to the individuals who have the responsibility to act on it. Right now, we often see them pulling in the data just to monitor and there is no context to it.
There are benefits to data consolidation with cybersecurity as a key focus.
Bringing the data into one central location paves the way for information sharing, data analytics, performance monitoring, and optimization. Cybersecurity should be at the forefront to ensure the data feed is reliable. Once the connection is protected, then the data quality and accurate time stamping of the data received should be considered, which includes verifying the reliability and accuracy of the instrumentation installed.
Read the article for more on considerations for an IIoT architecture and how IIoT technologies enable more comprehensive and effective energy management solutions.
Visit the Water & Wastewater sections on Emerson.com for more on solutions to improve energy and operational efficiency. You can also connect and interact with other IIoT and water & wastewater industry experts in the IIoT & Digital Transformation and Water & Wastewater groups in the Emerson Exchange 365 community.
