How the digital twin can deliver transformative outcomes to water utilities
This guide aims to help utilities answer three key questions:
-
What role can digital twin technology play in optimizing operations?
-
How can utilities apply this technology to maximum effect?
-
What can we learn from those utilities leading the way?
Water utilities are on a path to transformation. How can the digital twin fast-track progress?
Around the world, water utilities are embracing data analytics and digital technologies to deliver transformative outcomes for their communities. Digital solutions, many powered by digital twins, are helping water operators and managers solve their most pressing challenges: minimizing water and revenue losses; reducing capital spend to lower costs to communities; decreasing the impact of climate events; bringing down the costs of safely reclaiming wastewater; and reducing emissions associated with water and wastewater management.
But every innovation brings a learning curve – and digital twins are no different.
Traditional models for simulating infrastructure were cumbersome costly to build. Today, sophisticated machine learning tools better represent the infrastructure by automatically calibrating to match historical data. Coupled with the right expertise, advanced digital twin technology can improve network visibility, performance and compliance, and deliver significant cost savings. In many cases, however, a lack of frameworks to connect digital twins to holistic decision intelligence solutions makes it challenging for utilities to unlock their full value.
Drawing on the experience of the pacesetters, this guide explores how digital twin technology can be maximized to deliver the most powerful operational and environmental outcomes – and steps utilities can take to start achieving better results, today.
Digital twins explained
A digital twin is the assimilation of data and a computer model that helps operators understand how a physical asset, process, or system should be performing and helps to predict performance under changing conditions.
- Detect and diagnose anomalies
- Test different scenarios
- Predict outcomes
It’s what you do with the data that matters
When digital twin technology is coupled with advanced data science like hydroinformatics and water system expertise, utilities are empowered to meet their communities’ needs reliably, affordably and sustainably.
This holistic approach enables utilities to seamlessly integrate digital twins within their digital ecosystem, delivering enhanced visibility and predictive capabilities that enable dramatically improved capital and operational decision-making.
Spotlight on Hydroinformatics
Hydroinformatics engineers are multidisciplinary experts who combine hydraulic modeling skills, engineering and an in-depth understanding of the water cycle to tackle age-old water problems in new ways.
A hydroinformatics engineer works with the digital twin outputs to develop powerful algorithms that produce recommendations for a utility. These might include real-time operational recommendations through a real-time decision support system, or off-line recommendations pertaining to assets and planning initiatives.
Today’s utilities are inundated with data collection and analysis. Hydroinformatics engineers help cut through the deluge by designing algorithms that deliver the most useful data to the operator in the right way, at the right time, every time.
Digital twin technology can deliver benefits at four levels
Control. When combined with decision support systems and water expertise, the digital twin has the potential to deliver autonomous, optimized control, freeing up operators to focus on other tasks. Think self-driving car!
Recommendations. In sophisticated applications, the digital twin generates multiple scenarios and provides operational recommendations to achieve set KPIs. The operator then chooses a course of action based on these recommendations. Think GPS.
Scenarios. At this level, the digital twin is capable of processing variables to predict an outcome, but it still requires the operator to manually optimize the asset, process, or system.
Visibility. At its most basic level, a digital twin shows operators what is happening within an asset, process, or system right now. This application relies on the operator to take action based on the visibility of current operations.
…unlocking powerful outcomes
When combined with deep domain knowledge and hydroinformatics, the digital twin becomes a decision support system to improve outcomes.
Lowering OPEX and CAPEX
By using past data and automatically ‘calibrating’ to better represent the infrastructure, the digital twin enables continuous, real-time optimization and highly accurate predictions to improve the efficiency and resilience of an asset, process, or system.
Minimizing downtime and maintenance costs
By using past data and automatically ‘calibrating’ to better represent the infrastructure, the digital twin enables continuous, real-time optimization and highly accurate predictions to improve the efficiency and resilience of an asset, process, or system.
Empowering utility leaders to get ahead of workforce challenges
Rather than starting from scratch, data from the digital twin helps new operators pick up where their predecessors left off, driving incremental improvements as turnover in the workforce happens.
Delivering insight on the interrelationship of assets
For example, how does an underperforming pump impact a drinking water network and what strategy is needed to compensate in the short term and enable optimization?
Utilities can deliver big results across assets, processes and systems, no matter where they are in their digital transformation
Utilities in the early stages of digital transformation are achieving big results with smaller-scale applications of digital twin technology. Smart condition monitoring solutions help operators optimize the performance of individual assets like pumps in real time and predict failures long before they happen.
These solutions combine multiple data points, such as voltage and current from electric-motor power lines, with important parameters like pressure, level or flow, to create actionable insights. A powerful algorithm detects discrepancies at the earliest stage – with a level of precision beyond what’s possible with manual detection – to pinpoint their exact location and elements driving the alerts.
The result? Operators are empowered with the intelligence they need to make crucial decisions, earlier.
Learning from the pacesetters
Leveraging digital twin technology for process optimization
EWE WASSER GmbH (EWE) in Germany wanted a system to optimize the energy consumption associated with aeration and improve safety with better system control of chemical usage while ensuring compliance with local effluent limits at the Cuxhaven treatment plant. EWE partnered with Xylem to develop and deploy the Xylem Treatment System Optimization, which uses machine learning to create models of the carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous elimination processes based on data from the plant’s SCADA system. Several “virtual sensors” were developed to calculate an estimate of the incoming carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous loads of the influent.
Since implementing Xylem’s treatment plant solution, the Cuxhaven treatment plant has shown a 30% reduction in aeration energy usage, corresponding to 1.2 million kWh annually, while ensuring that all plant effluent concentrations continue to maintain regulatory compliance.
Optimizing networks with the digital twin
Faced with climate variability that stressed the performance of existing infrastructure, the City of South Bend, Indiana built an operational digital twin that optimized its existing infrastructure network with artificial intelligence, creating a smart system capable of predictably reacting to sudden wet weather events.
The City’s digital twin also enabled scenario analysis to determine investment pathways that would be most acceptable to the community through fact-based public consultations. Xylem is now working with South Bend on a revised plan consisting of a monitoring system of more than 165 sensors and software agents located throughout the City’s urban watershed. The smart sewer system will enable the City to exceed the requirements of a wastewater consent decree for 60% less capital investment than originally planned.
Optimizing the collection system with the digital twin
When the City of Columbus, Ohio, was seeking new control strategies to help reduce sewer overflows and determine ways to reduce operational and maintenance costs while achieving maximum use of its assets, the City’s Department of Public Utilities partnered with Xylem to design a solution. The City has two interconnected treatment plants and a chemically enhanced primary system for wet weather treatment. As a result, its network is complex, with several gates in the collection system that allow control. Xylem worked with the City to design a solution, rooted in digital twin technology and underpinned by a hydroinformatics approach, that would offer precision guidance on when the utility should utilize wet weather treatment facilities at its two wastewater treatment plants.
Xylem Wastewater Network Optimization calibrates data from various sources across the City’s network of assets to provide recommendations to guide operations and achieve maximum utilization.
Optimizing networks with the digital twin
Nashville Metro Water Services operates a complex water distribution system including over 3,000 miles of water mains, two 90MGD water treatment plants and 56 water pumping stations. When the utility was experiencing multiple main breaks in a section of its network served by two reservoirs and three pumping stations, it used Xylem’s drinking water digital twin solution to identify the issue and ensure the problem was addressed at the source.
Xylem’s solution isolated historical data from a recent break which showed all three pumping stations experiencing a pressure surge simultaneously. The altitude valve was shutting off at one of the reservoirs which was reaching its fill. However, the primary pump was still running to fill the second reservoir. This was creating the pressure surges which were causing the main breaks. By adjusting its pump and valve operation sequences, the utility was able to keep both altitude valves open and eliminate the pressure surge.
Applying digital twin technology at the asset level
When a major wastewater utility in Europe was facing cavitation issues at one of its treated sewage water pumping stations, an asset-level digital twin application was deployed as part of the utility’s control strategy. The pumping station was responsible for transporting water over a long and complex network toward the ocean, which ultimately led to variable water levels. Due to this variability, the pumps were operating in an uncontrollable state of cavitation. Variables in ocean tide levels and treatment outputs also made it impossible for operators to set the right pump control strategy.
SAM PRO – Xylem’s Smart Asset Management Performance & Reliability Optimization solution – was used to define the acceptable operating parameters for the pumps. By optimizing the pump station system performance, the utility was able to increase the reliability and total lifetime of its assets. Not only did this eliminate unplanned service visits to the site, but it also improved overall system efficiency, resulting in significant OpEx and CapEx savings.
How to get there: 3 steps to supercharge your digital twin
1. Audit
Audit your current situation by reviewing all areas where forecasted or more detailed data and information can help your utility make faster or more efficient operational or planning decisions.
Questions to ask:
- What real-time data do we currently have access to? For example, do we have the visibility to track flow, pressure, and water quality in the drinking water network, or flow and level in the collection system? Are we using that data to make improvements?
- Do we have accurate flow forecasts for water distribution systems or collection networks?
- Are we acting on our data and leveraging it to make informed operational or business decisions?
- Where could we apply tools to save energy and chemicals without compromising water quality?
2. Evaluate
Evaluate how much value a digital twin can bring to your utility by starting with a “Discovery Project”. This is a low-cost way to gain an understanding of the challenges and data requirements for implementing a digital twin, and a rationale for implementation, possibly including a return-on-investment analysis. A Discovery Project can also help to articulate the value of a partnership engagement with your technology provider.
Questions to ask:
- Does the digital twin provide real-time decision support, giving operators recommendations based on current or predicted conditions to further optimize the water, wastewater or treatment system?
- Can the digital twin automatically optimize and control assets in the network, and provide alerts when anomalies occur in the system?
- Are there limitations to the types of data the digital twin can leverage (i.e. SCADA, GIS, sensors, etc.)?
- How can our utility efficiently and accurately assess the ROI of deploying a digital twin in our unique context?
3. Prioritize
Prioritize projects appropriate to your unique requirements. It might make sense to start by optimizing a single asset or area of the utility. Or there could be an opportunity to move faster if there is an established understanding of how a digital twin can be leveraged to provide operational guidance, automation and control across your network. Every community, utility, and system are unique.
Questions to ask:
- Does the digital twin offer rounded expertise – water & wastewater, data science and civil engineering – to allow you to fully leverage the technology’s potential?
- Will the provider partner with you to optimize the digital twin as operating conditions change over time?
- Is the provider appropriately resourced to serve your utility and provide ongoing support?
Looking to the Future
As water utilities around the world embed digital solutions throughout their networks, digital twin technology is accelerating digital transformation.
A potent blend of digital twin data, decision science, and hydroinformatics is enabling utilities to cut through the data deluge to make smarter capital and operational decisions.
Whether at the asset, process, or system level, water operators are delivering big results quickly – and setting up for a more resilient and sustainable water future.