Energy Monitoring goes non-intrusive

The UK water industry uses a huge 7700 Gigawatt-hours of electrical energy each year, equivalent to 4 million tons of CO2. Most of this energy goes into electric motors to do essential jobs such as pumping water and aerating wastewater. An exciting project starting at WRc will help tackle the reduction of this energy use, by providing a new tool to measure the power used by electric motors. The project is a partnership between, Northern Ireland Water, Nottingham University, Severn Trent Water, The Technology Strategy Board, WRc and Yorkshire Water.

The project acronym, NILM stands for ‘Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring’. The thinking behind the project is that engineers and operators need a tool to enable them to make energy measurements without the need for a trained electrician to open panels and install sub-metering equipment. They can then log the energy used by, for example, an aeration system or a pumping station with the load treated or the megalitres of water raised. By comparing this with benchmark performance data they can identify and improve wasteful sub-processes and machines. The method can also be used to make very quick spot measurements on individual machines to monitor their power use.

The project, developed from a WRc collaborative research project, will use Nottingham University’s expertise in electrical machines to solve the technical challenges of the NILM method. WRc and Nottingham University are very pleased to have recruited Dr Alan Zhang as the KTP (Knowledge Transfer partnership) Associate. Alan gained extensive experience working with electric motors in his PhD, and will develop and test the equipment with supervision from WRc and Nottingham University. Alan will be working closely with the water company partners so that the equipment will deliver the performance needed to support engineers and operators working to cut the industry’s carbon emissions.