At a press conference on December 19, 2011 the City of Guelph announced together with the Province that a number of grants had been obtained by the City as part of the Province’s Showcasing Water Innovation program. One of the projects that received a grant from the Province will be undertaken jointly by the City of Guelph, Municipality of Chatham-Kent and the Township of Centre-Wellington. Eramosa Engineering is pleased to be involved in this initiative, providing project management and technical expertise to the team.
The overall goal of the project is for the City of Guelph Water Services Division to improve the efficiency in the provision of safe drinking water to the residents of Guelph. Efficiencies will be realized through operational management practices which will be focused on transmission system improvements to reduce water loss and improve the management of energy consumption in the transmission of potable and palatable water to the residents of Guelph. This results in the sustainable management of a limited resource as Guelph is an entirely groundwater based system, reduced energy consumption and greenhouse gas production by one of the City’s largest electricity users, and reduced water rates for the community.
Other goals include making transmission system information more accessible by:
- Continued development and testing of a patentable, made in Ontario, pressure transmitter which mounts in a hydrant and provides real-time data to the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system at a fraction of the capital and O&M cost of traditional methods, while providing a high level of accuracy and installation flexibility.
- Development of a direct buried flow meter using combinations of existing technology which will greatly reduce the capital and O&M cost of traditional flow meter installations.
- Continued development and use of a developed in Ontario SCADA reporting package.
Finally, a better understanding of the transmission system baseline performance and impacts of changes in operational management and focused transmission system improvements will be developed through the use of advanced transmission system modeling techniques. These advanced modeling techniques will be developed in Ontario, and will ultimately lead to the development of a predictive transmission system operational tool as a component of this project. This tool will enable operations staff to assess the impact of real time changes to the transmission system. This function will be particularly important in the ongoing development and effectiveness of demand management programs operated by the City.
For additional information please click on the following links:
http://mayorsblog.guelph.ca/2011/12/19/2m-for-new-water-innovations-in-guelph/
http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/environment/en/funding/showcasing_water_innovation/index.htm