WEMap: A Software Tool for Estimating Water Utility Energy Savings from Water Conservation

The water sector demands significant energy inputs to deliver safe and reliable water to urban communities. It follows that water conservation efforts can lead to measurable upstream reductions in energy use, as well as complementary reductions in operational costs and greenhouse gas emissions. However, the complexity of many urban water infrastructure networks produces a high level of seasonal and spatial variability of the energy embedded in the water delivered across the utility service territory. This variability constrains the ability of water agencies to make defensible estimates of the energy savings that may be achieved from water conservation programs. To address this challenge, the Center for Water-Energy Efficiency (CWEE) at UC Davis has developed the WEMap (water-energy mapping) tool. Leveraging the open-source R programming language, the web-based tool integrates detailed energy intensity assessments of water utility infrastructure systems with a user-friendly interface to support decision-making to secure linked water-energy savings. More specifically, the program streamlines the estimation of energy savings for a range of water conservation scenarios, including interventions targeted at specific customer types and/or particular geographic areas within the service territory. The software program was tested, refined, and debugged in direct collaboration with the Austin Water Utility in Texas­–using their infrastructure system as a test simulation for the water-energy analysis and directly incorporating their feedback to advance data visualization and the overall user interface.