The Smart Grid for Water

Book excerpt: Smarter Water - Increase Revenue - Decrease Costs - Delight Customers - Preserve Our Most Vital Resource Solving the Water Crisis With Data Supply-side engineering - massive reservoirs, colossal water diversion schemes, pumping rivers across mountaintops, and even desalination - are relics of a bygone era in water management. The environmental and financial costs are simply too high. No supply-side solution can match the simplicity, resilience and effectiveness of a data-driven demand-side management program that reduces consumption, identifies losses, increases the life of our existing infrastructure and improves the financial capabilities of our utilities. The development of the smart grid for water is, for the first time, providing water managers with a complete understanding of not only how much water is used, but where and when. The 21st century water manager needs to manage the flow of data and information as well as the flow of water. Our future depends on it.