Managing Peak Water Usage, Part 3

Welcome to the third part (the thrilling conclusion!) of our series on managing peak water usage. In previous posts we discussed how cities Troy and Novi reduced their water peak water usage by 30% with peak shifting. (Peak water rates occur when a community’s water usage during an hour equals or exceeds its maximum daily use amount.)

Northville, Oak Park and Auburn Hills are cities that reduced their peak usage rates through system optimization, cutting their water rates by 30-40% in some areas.

Bedroom communities with high water rates under the new rate system turned to a third approach: storage increases.

After suburbs with a high number of irrigation sprinklers found morning peaking factors climbing over 3.0, they looked at adding storage to their system. Not only would constructing storage tanks reduce water rates so dramatically to produce a 3 to 10 year payback, the communities would also gain the benefit of more reliable pressure, increased system reliability and increase fire protection.

In Orion Township, adding storage meant that it could go from a peak hour customer to a maximum day customer, shaving 25% off its annual water rates. This made building a 2.5 million gallon elevated storage tank a no brainer – rate savings alone would pay for the tank in less than five years.

By letting its customers “choose their own rate plans”, wholesale supplier DWSD recouped its own costs from peak usage and the resulting rate increases drove community awareness of peak water usage. Using different approaches - peak shifting, system optimization and storage increases - communities changed behaviors and changed their system operations.