Moving forward with its water/wastewater initiative, CEE is convening members and industry stakeholders to identify, communicate and promote best practices. During a breakout session at the June 14 Program Meeting, Pacific Gas & Electric and NYSERDA presented information about their research and programs.

CEE’s Water/Wastewater Committee is also supporting the efforts of the American Water Works Association Research Foundation (AwwaRF) in the development of a metric to measure, and compare, efficiency in water and wastewater facilities (see related story).

PG&E survey
Stephen Fok, Senior Program Engineer at PG&E, reported the preliminary results of a municipal water and wastewater baseline study. Seven of PG&E’s 18 major municipal water treatment customers and more than 70 of PG&E’s 300-plus municipal wastewater treatment customers responded to the survey.

Nearly 50 percent of the facilities polled expressed “concern” about energy costs but only about 26 percent had done an energy audit in the past 10 years (about 15 percent reported that they “weren’t sure”).

About 32 percent had participated in an energy-efficiency project in the past five years. The survey also focused on specific treatment techniques within water and wastewater systems in an effort to determine what types of technologies are most common.

Based on this information, PG&E will make a determination of which technologies should be considered “baseline” and which can be considered energy efficient. Energy-efficient technologies would then be supported by PG&E programs.

Many committee members attending the June 14 breakout session agreed that the baseline technologies identified by PG&E were representative of the most common water and wastewater process technologies in their service territories. The committee will further explore PG&E’s framework of typical water and wastewater process areas, baseline technologies and energy-efficiency measures to provide input and guidance for member programs.

The survey also pointed out the need to increase awareness among municipal decision-makers about the energy-saving opportunities at these facilities. Workshops and audits will be held in PG&E’s service territory to promote these concepts.

Again, several committee members identified a similar need to raise awareness and educate facility managers about the benefits of energy-efficiency measures and the availability of program offerings. The committee is exploring strategies to collect workshop materials and resources, and make them available to interested members.

NYSERDA
Kathleen O’Connor, Project Manager at the New York State Energy and Research Authority (NYSERDA) reported on a statewide assessment of water and wastewater facilities. The goal is to establish baseline energy use and cost data so that energy-saving opportunities can be evaluated.

Through this study, NYSERDA is also exploring the potential energy impacts of new technologies and regulations as well as the institutional drivers/barriers to implement energy projects. O’Connor also described a sub-metering program and some of NYSERDA’s program offerings for water and wastewater facilities.

Under this project, NYSERDA is collecting detailed electric power data from eight large wastewater treatment plants and has identified several potential energy-efficiency measures, including lighting and HVAC improvements, on-site generation and peak-shaving/peak-reduction programs.

Annual cost savings in the eight participating plants averaged about 15 percent, with paybacks of 1-8 years.

NYSERDA programs support technology assessment, technical assistance and loans for facility improvements. More than one-third of all the opportunities identified through the technical assistance programs are associated with pump system improvements.

CEE’s Water/Wastewater Committee plans to continue monitoring NYSERDA’s energy-efficiency efforts in this sector. The committee will also document best practices and lessons learned for the benefit of member programs.

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