Water+Energy Presentation at CWEA Annual Conference 2013, Palm Springs

It was a very good turnout at the CWEA Annual Conference this morning. We talked about the next frontier in Water and Energy Nexus. The reception was very positive. Some people who could not attend my talk caught hold of me in the corridor/hall and wanted to connect and learn about with Proteus' Water+Energy work. I could not have asked for more!

The ideas we present here are new and refreshing. The concept of flexible load on the grid is not in the mainstream, but it will soon become a reality. Discussions are ongoing at the CEC level on how to prepare for the future grid when renewables will change the peak load profile. Water industry stands ready to meet the challenge, to act as a flexible load!

The plan forward is to get pilots going for flexible loads using treatment plants and pipeline networks in all three IOU territories by spring next year. Once the concept is proven, the work will commence on pricing and program development. As the water industry amounts to 20 - 45% of California's total energy use, that is a lot of load that can act as a flexible load on the grid. Welcome to the future!

55,000+ water agencies in the US, and....??

United States is approximately 3,718,691 square miles in size, and has a population of 314,661,000 (mid 2012 estimate). To manage this, we have 55,000+ water agencies. I am not including wastewater agencies here. In several places, we have combined water and wastewater agencies, but in many places it is not so.

In San Diego county,  we have 4,525.52 square miles and a population of 3,095,313 (2010 census). To manage this, we have 24 water agencies and the San Diego Water Authority to oversee the region.

(In comparison, there are only a few dozen power utilities in the US, and only one that operates in San Diego.)

Let's do the simple math:
A typical US water agency manages about 67.6 square miles, and 5,721 people.
A typical water agency in San Diego manages about 188.5 square miles, and 128,971 people.

Yes, the simple math does not really do justice to the numbers. There are many agencies covering large swaths of land and support very small population, and vice-versa. But the underlying question is do these water agencies currently operate at their best efficiency point and giving the best value to their customers?
We are talking about efficient resource distribution, limited water loss, optimization of labor, connect with customers so that they understand and appreciate the impact of water usage patterns. And we all know that the answer is No. All these agencies get an A or B for effort, but about a D or lower for results.

So, what are the Solutions?

Everyone will jump up and down and say Innovation! (It's an over used buzz word these days.) Yes, innovation is the answer, but it comes in different forms. Just finding new treatment technologies is not enough. Unfortunately, water agencies currently define innovation = better water treatment methods. Innovation has to touch every aspect of the Water Industry, inside out. As a first step, there are four sectors where these agencies need to focus on:

Energy - Apart from working on energy efficiency projects (i.e. change the light bulbs, buy efficiency motors,etc.), the agencies need to focus on operating the systems with dynamic real-time optimization. More details on the concept can be found here. The result of this will not only be energy savings but also additional revenue that can then be applied back towards system improvements.

Technology - Adopt a SMART Operations and Maintenance concept. This will include model based control, real-time forecasting, advanced sensing and monitoring, dynamic data visualization, analysis and decisions. The water agencies have a Big Data problem, all we need is to adopt the technology tools and solutions from other disciplines and adapt them to our operations.

Economics - Change the pricing models to match supply and demand and reflect the 'real' value of water based on it's source and use. Move from the era of water development to the era of water allocation, test out the strategies and implement them. Move away from capital financing needs (historically met by Federal and State grants) to financial instruments from private sector as low-risk-low-return investment options.

Communication - Engage with public using communication channels beyond bill-stuffers and calendars with kid's drawings. Develop relationships with community organizations without explicitly trying the 'educate' the public. Lose the word "Outreach" from all your vocabulary. Be a partner.

For more details.

Emerging Contaminants and Cars-going-off-the-Cliff

"It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and THEN do your best." - W. Edwards Deming

The topic of Emerging Contaminants came up earlier this week while discussing future of wastewater treatment plants on the US. My opinion is that we are focusing on the wrong place with regulations and our hard earned money.

The metaphor I would like to cite here is often used but very apt and may help us understand what's happening with this issue. Consider a steady stream of cars driving towards a cliff and then plunging off into the abyss. The 'leaders' here look at this devastating situation, get all worked up and quickly decide to do something. Instead of going to the top of the cliff and diverting the traffic off the course of disaster, the 'leaders' decide to get a fleet of ambulances at the bottom of the cliff. That is exactly where the regulations related to Emerging Contaminants are headed, it is a waste of money and effort. This after-the-fact treatment rather than avoidance is really scary. Our 'leaders' have either given up rational thinking or do not think that they are leaders capable of affecting human thoughts and behavior.

The solution is - Think Differently!
How did Southwest Airlines make double digits profit when all the other US airlines were losing billions of dollars and shedding off thousands of jobs?
How did Zappos build a $1+billion company that sells shoes and also 'delivers happiness'?
How did Dr. Wiwat prevent 5 million people in Thailand from contracting HIV?

If the cause is right and the messaging is right, people will follow. We, folks in the water industry and beyond,  have to learn to engage with our customers in a whole different level. Let's start that now!

Technology Spotlight: Aquaporin

We live on the blue planet, yet only 1% of the 'blue gold' is available to the 7+ billion people.

We all think desalination is the solution to our impending water problems. If we can somehow take the 97.5% of salt water and cost effectively desalt it, we will have enough water for everyone! But, this comes at a cost. The current technologies for desalination are expensive, not only in capital, i.e. to build treatment plants, but also require a lot of energy to operate. The most common desalination technology is reverse osmosis (RO), where we push water against a very thin membrane with tiny holes. (Think kidneys) These holes allow only water molecules to go through and leaves behind the salt (concentrate / brine). To push water against the membrane requires high pressure and hence is very energy intensive. However, it is interesting to note that the energy requirement for RO desalinated water has reduced by half over the last decade. This is primarily because membrane manufacturers have designed better performing membranes. The technology is about 65% efficient at this stage. It will be foolish to expect that we can achieve 100% efficiency in the next decade, as you can never get 100% efficiency in any technology. However, it is reasonable that we will be slowly edging towards 70-75% efficiency. Moore's Law will not apply to this technology, and further 'fine-tuning' of this technology will  yield diminishing returns.

So where is the innovation? Can we reduce the need for pressure all together? A Danish company is using biomimicry and embedding proteins in membranes that can regulate the flow of water. Ever wonder how mangroves grow in brackish water? How do they filter out the salts and absorb water? The protein is called aquaporin and it sits within cell membranes. In 2003, Dr. Peter Agre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (which he shared with Dr. Roderick MacKinnon) for his discovery of aquaporins. These proteins are also in our red blood cells, kidneys, eye lenses, almost anywhere there is water transfer across membranes. The company, Aquaporin A/S, is currently working on developing membranes that will desalinate water by a very different mechanism from the current traditional RO methods, and possibly with smaller energy footprint.



This technology is still in development phase but shows great promise. The initial trials with NASA have proven quite successful. We wish Aquaporin A/S success in their endeavors, and look forward to their product in the market in the near future.

Hi-Tech Teabags to Filter Water

Every now and then we come across some team or another trying to design clean water solutions for the 1.2 billion people who do not have access to clean drinking water. We have heard about the LifeStraw, now South African scientists are developing carbon fiber teabags that can filter water. We commend such out-of-the-box ideas. We need more of them, especially since one in three persons on this planet live in a situation where they cannot get clean water.

When working on a potential global solution to address safe water, there are a few points we need to consider:

Price Point. The cost of the solution needs to match the ability of the customers. LifeStraw is priced too high, may work in disaster conditions when there is aid flowing through and these units are heavily subsidized or distributed free; but not for regular use. Also, care should be taken so that when the solution is employed for regular use, the item is not given away for free. When we pay for an item, we place a value on it and appreciate it. Price of the solution therefore should be right - affordable while creating a sense of value.

Reuse. Disposable items are not favored by the masses. Where poverty reigns, people become expert recyclers. When they get a new dress, they save it till the old ones are worn out. Then they take out the new dress on a special occasion. Once the new dress has lost it's luster, they will make bed sheets out of it. When that's worn out, they will use it as towels. Then they will reuse the large towels as small hand towels. When those wear out, they may stitch them up to use as rags. When the rags wear out, they may use them as pulp for something else. That is how poverty works. We may not like it or feel sorry for such methods, but it is the reality. Hence, as designers we need to be cognizant of this need for reuse and design equipment such that there is residual uses after the primary function has been met.

Education. When we design single use items, such as filters, we often forget to understand the limitations of the end users to comprehend the useful life of such items. Education is very important. We need to explain not only the purpose of the filter (e.g. how it cleans the water and saves lives), we will have to educate the end users on how to (and how not to) use the filter, when the filter is no longer working (end of useful life), how to regenerate, etc. Even in the US with 100% literacy, we have found many water systems being operated way under capacity and without understanding of the fundamentals thereby causing much harm to the environment. Education and training is of utmost importance, may be even more than the solution itself.

Community Solutions. In most poor countries where water scarcity is severe, the most sustainable solution is a community solution instead of individual solutions. Communities in these areas share similar financial, familial, political, and social virtues and very rarely will you find an individualistic trait. Individualism is prominent in more affluent societies where competition is severe for luxuries of life. In societies where people are focused on basic survival issues, community solutions work more effectively and should be encouraged. Focus should be on simple indigenous solutions that are developed, designed, and built locally by the people. The people can then take ownership of the project, feel proud of their creation, and take care of it.

PROTEUS Consulting is very dedicated to help create a world where everyone has access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities. We work with various researchers around the world who are working to address this goal. We also work with NGOs such as Water For People who is active in implementing such solutions. If you are interested to help out or learn more about our efforts, please contact us.

Value Based Water Management

Value based water management is a topic that I think of often. I believe that there is an intrinsic link between human values and what humans do to the water scape. Science and technological advances have enabled us to be better manipulators of our natural environment and made our lives more comfortable. We no longer have to walk five miles everyday to get a bucket of water and enjoy acres of lush green lawns and rain forest recreation in the middle of a dessert. We have indeed come a long way from how our ancestors lived. While we have devised new ways to secure a cocooned life, we have lost our symbiotic relationship with nature. That hurts us now in more ways than we can comprehend. In some ways, I think, in spite of all the technological advances, we have become 'stupider'!

Man is a part of nature, not above it. All ancient cultures recognized this. Be it Native Americans, the Tribes in Africa and Asia, or the Aboriginals in Australia... All these cultures had the same underlying principle (or philosophy) - "Respect nature". It was this respect that also allowed them to manipulate the environment, BUT with the emphasis on not doing any harm. Living in those days meant understanding and existing in harmony with the environment rather than dominating it. Nature was not the enemy, nor was it a commodity that can be exploited for wealth and power. Nature had a value of it's own in day to day life where every living thing (and sometimes non living thing as well) were interconnected and had a special function. Plants nourished animals, animals were then hunted for food, and then when humans expired, it became food for the pants. It was the circle of life. Yes, every ancient culture truly believed in this philosophy and practiced it diligently.  Yes, they all sought to "improve" their natural world all the time, but they limited such improvements to what was necessary. The operative words here are "as necessary", and not the indiscriminate slaughter and wasteful gathering. This material life was abhorred by ancient cultures through spiritual tenets, and these tenets were very sensitive to the balances in delicate ecosystems. They recognized that adverse interference in ecosystems threatened their own existence as wells as the natural world on which they depended and of which they were an integral part.

Where are we now? We are sitting in a big luxury motor home, cruising along a highway with no destination in sight. We are not in the driver's seat, we are just a passenger. We do not know where we are going, we don't even care. We love the comfort of this padded home and as long as the truck is moving, the scenery is good, there is fuel, water, and air conditioning, why do we have to care about anything else? Well, we have lost touch with the fundamental concept that no matter how much we think we have 'grown up', our umbilical cord is still attached with nature. There is no escape, and you cannot cut it off.

A friend put it another way: "We are like a bunch of youngsters, who got high on alcohol and drugs one night and decided to rent a boat and take a ride up and down the river. We pushed the boat into the water and started paddling away. We were drunk and drugged, mind you. We passed out after a while - it was a lot of work to just keep paddling! Dawn broke, we woke up.  We realized that we had not gone more than couple yards from the shore. What? How? Well, we forgot to lift the anchor! So there we were, paddling through the night, all drunk and drugged up and imagining a beautiful scenery go by."

Every decision and choice we make comes at a cost. We have been seasoned to not look at "total solutions" but only to put the brackets where it seems to fit us the best right now. This conditioning did not happen overnight. We all have evolved from the nature-loving ancient cultures very slowly, over 6,000 years. First we started looking at nature as a resource to be exploited, primarily for community, and hence for nation building. We justified it by saying that the common good and mutual benefits ranked higher than individual self-interest. Then, slowly that cause got morphed to a spirited individualism and an appetite for a perceived profit that heightened the exploitation of nature to new levels. Land, energy, and water got colonized in political and legal institutions generating colossal conflicts and social turmoil.

Oh well, we are where we are! What can we do now? We have to reverse engineer our way back to nature-loving humans again. The first thing we need is the will to do so. That will has to come from within each individual. The pendulum has to swing back from individualism to harmony with nature. And this swing can be accelerated by the terrific brains we already have. The brackets have to move further out, from individuals to community, and then to the whole world encompassing the entire life cycle of each element. For water, we will have to look at total water management - effectively manage every drop we have and use it most efficiently while not exploiting the natural resources. We have to become more creative on how to capture, use, and reuse water with zero discharge and waste. We also have to move away from central facilities to micro / community level facilities. We have to learn to appreciate the rhythms of nature and work with it to create opportunities, not fight it.

In subsequent blogs I will lay out my vision and plan of sustainable water management that will be synchronous with the values learned from ancient cultures. It will by no means be easy, and I am not saying that you have to go to a primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle. We have to respect nature for what she is, and not fight her, but harmonize with her. We have the brains to do it, we just don't seem to find the will.

What is your Water Footprint?

Carbon footprint is a major topic of discussion these days and every one seems to have an opinion on it, one way or the other. While that debate goes on, I would like to introduce you to the concept of Water Footprint. Have you thought about it?

Several items play into creating our Water Footprint: the water that is consumed by us, the water that is used to create and dispose the products we use, and the global trade of these products. The total Water Footprint can be broken down into three major components: the blue, the green, and the grey. Blue water footprint is the volume of freshwater used up from the global water resources to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community. For example, the use of water to irrigate crops. Green water footprint is the volume of water used up from the global green water resources such as the rainwater stored in the soil as soil moisture. And, grey water footprint is the volume of  wastewater generated from goods and services used and is calculated as the volume of water required to dilute the wastewater to attain a quality better than or equal to international water quality standards. The graphic below shows your total water footprint.

-->

Source: Hoekstra,  A.Y. (2008) Water neutral: reducing and offsetting the impacts of water footprints, Value of Water Research Report Series No.28, UNESCO-IHE.

Historically, we have been aware of only the little box on the left named "water withdrawal" because that is what we see as the gallons of water consumed on our water bills. But we fail comprehend the amount of water we consume on a daily basis via the products and services we use.


Here is your water cost for common items used daily:
A cotton shirt = 2,700 litres (713 gallons)
A cup of coffee = 140 liters (37 gallons)
100 gms (~3.5oz) of chocolate = 2,400 liters (634 gallons)
1 kg (~1/2 lb) sugar = 1,500 liters (396 gallons)
1 kg (~1/2 lb) tomatoes = 180 liters (48 gallons)
1 glass of wine = 120 liters (32 gallons)
1 hamburger = 2,400 liters (634 gallons)
1 kg leather (as in shoes, bags, etc) = 16,600 liters (4,385 gallons)
1 sheet of A4 paper = 10 liters (2.7 gallons)

And yes, the 'green fuels' like bio-ethanol and bio-diesel have water footprints too. This footprint does not get incorporated into the case for "green" energy, but they should!! See the figure below.

-->

Source: Gerbens-Leenes, W., Hoekstra, A.Y. and Van der Meer, T.H. (2009) The water footprint of bio-energy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS Early Edition, doi:10.1073/pnas.0812619106.

Next, there is a global perspective to water footprint since global trade influences the water footprint to a great extent. Consumption of goods in one place has significant impact on the water resources in another place – and that is nothing new.


Here is a comparison of the countries with their water footprints – no surprises, really!

-->

[Hoekstra & Chapagain, 2008]

I am not against global trade, but buying local would be a good practice. It's hard, I know!
I don’t want you to get all guilty and stop drinking water and eating, but being conscious of your impact in this world is a good thing to be aware of. You can buy your way out of your carbon footprint and feel all giddy about it, but the only way to offset you water footprint is to be aware of the choices you make.

To the "Green Community", I urge you to start including water footprint in your calculation. A design / plan can only be truly sustainable if "WATER" is considered along with energy.

To all you tech savvy people out there who care about your water footprint, there is an iPhone App for you!!

Credit: Thoughts and information presented in this blog is from http://www.waterfootprint.org/ It is an amazing website with loads of information. I urge you all to visit this website and learn more about Water Footprint.