A DMA limits supply reliability as it restricts water supply to customers through a single pipe at the DMA inlet. Traditional DMAs can also have adverse effects on both hydraulics (reliability and redundancy) and water quality (water age).
#SENSUS WATER METER STUCK INSTALL#
It also takes significant coordination with night crews to close the multitude of service connections and properly install the DMA in these environments. For mature networks in dense urban networks, flow meter installation in sectors with 3,000 connections requires a multiyear capital expense commitment. The subdivision of a complex network and measurement of flow at specific boundary points is useful for water accountability, but DMAs are not without limitations. The intention of limited boundaries within the DMA is to make it easier to measure water flow and determine excess leakage and identify new leaks. In some instances, DMAs can also measure outflows. These zones have strict hydraulic boundaries governed by closed valves at most of the DMA boundaries, except for one or two with measured inflow into this defined sector. As a result, utilities can prioritize leakage crew deployment, pinpoint leaks both quickly and accurately and gain system intelligence on overall performance.ĭepending on the type of customer (residential, commercial or industrial) and aggregated water consumption, a typical DMA consists of up to 10 miles of pipeline with anywhere from 500 to 3,000 service connections. Minimum nighttime flow tracking can alert operators to leaks or bursts via a corresponding increase or spike in flow. Regardless of the availability of customer metering data, the water utility will often track minimum nighttime flow, as demand is low and the flow tends to be fairly consistent. Unexpected and noticeable increases in flow velocity and pressure can indicate potential leakage. The minimum nighttime flow approach is used in both traditional DMAs and vDMAs due to its effectiveness and simplicity in tracking water losses. This allows operators to use flow meters to closely monitor flow into these areas and apply nighttime low-flow monitoring techniques to identify leaks. To achieve a deeper understanding of water balance and more precise calculation of NRW, water utilities have implemented DMAs across their networks for decades, dividing areas into zones with strict hydraulic boundaries. This measurable information can be used to locate the leaking pipe. Insight into these critical areas can help utilities realize millions of dollars in savings and change the economics of water management.Ī pipe leak will typically lead to a noticeable change in the flow velocity and pressure in the surrounding area. While this type of broad water audit attempts to account for the total volume water in the system against the total volume of water billed, it often lacks the detailed granularity necessary to understand each component of the water balance and the sources of water and revenue loss. With more employees working remotely, this will help utilities facilitate the automation of the water loss process.Ī thorough water audit across an entire network is critical to understanding the overall water use efficiency of a distribution system. Today, progressive utilities are using digital technologies to create virtual district metering areas (vDMAs), eliminating the limitations of the physical DMA by utilizing data to provide actionable insights into the condition of their networks. Even with this improvement, there were limitations of these physical DMAs, many of which still persist today, from being costly to implement to having adverse effects on both hydraulics and water. This practice became synonymous with reducing water loss and good NRW management. In the 1980s, water utilities in Europe began to divide their distribution networks into sectors called district metering areas (DMAs). After experiencing significant real water losses in its distribution system and having difficulty locating the root causes, this large water authority in United Arab Emirates took a proactive approach by using real-time data to identify the source of leaks, reducing non-revenue water and gaining system intelligence to improve future operations, maintenance, and capital planning. This discrepancy of non-revenue water (NRW) is driven by a combination of real losses (leakage in the distribution system) and apparent losses (water consumed but not paid for caused by inaccurate meters, billing problems or theft), as well as unbilled authorized consumption (i.e., firefighting and system flushing). Progressive utilities are leveraging technology to improve the economics of water managementĪccording to World Bank, a 30% gap exists between the volume of water delivered by utilities versus the amount of water billed, costing the global economy $14 billion every year.