The Village of Rosemont has begun a new era of unprecedented visibility into their drinking water distribution system for the benefit of its customers.
Aquify, an Exelon company, has completed the design and implementation of a comprehensive sensor and analytics system on the Village of Rosemont drinking water distribution network.
The Aquify system segments Rosemont’s system into three Districted Meter Areas (DMAs). Aquify installed eight flow meters and pressure sensors which are now delivering real-time data to Aquify’s 24/7 monitoring and analytics teams. The system utilizes TaKaDu’s machine learning analytics software with insertion flow meters supplied by Trimble Water and FlowTronic.
The Aquify system is expected to deliver economic benefits to the Village of more than two times the investment. The environmental and sustainability benefits include reduced water loss, reduced energy consumption and reduced chemicals used to pump and treat the water.
Rosemont, a community adjacent to O’Hare airport and home to 4,000 residents, is a convention and tourist destination. The village is home to the Allstate Arena, the Rosemont Theater, a minor league baseball franchise and ballpark, and a 200,000 sq. ft. dining and entertainment district. Rosemont’s water distribution network includes 31 miles of pipe and services approximately 730 water customers.
The partnership between Rosemont and Aquify began when Village leaders were seeking a solution to reduce Non-Revenue Water (NRW) through the implementation of remote monitoring technology. NRW has been rising in the Village over recent years and traditional leak detection methodologies have not always been effective. Further, Rosemont has no reliable way to measure water theft. Finally, limited staff resources made an in-house solution impractical.
“After a significant due-diligence process, we determined that Aquify brought all the right elements together to help lead us into a new era of leveraging technology to the service of our water customers,” said Lisa DiMatteo, Director of Public Utilities. “As all public water utilities know well, water is becoming an ever more precious commodity. It was essential that we do everything possible to reduce the amount of water wasted in our system to be fiscally and environmentally responsible for our entire community. Aquify has provided us the vision and execution plan to get this done without burdening current staff and operations. We’re delighted to begin this journey and are confident we will see tremendous results.”
“In the Chicago-area, Rosemont is noted as a community of forward-thinkers and action-oriented leaders,” said Lev Goldberg, CEO of Aquify. “We’re delighted to be entering into this partnership with Rosemont to deploy our proven solutions to reduce water loss and improve system visibility through real-time monitoring and insights.”
Engineering services related to the project are provided by Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd (CBBEL). CBBEL, who recommended Aquify to the Village to center their water loss management strategy, anticipate seeing additional benefits in their hydraulic modeling and water system planning efforts for the Village.
“For communities like Rosemont that use Lake Michigan supply, reducing water loss will quickly become a priority as the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) adjusts its supply allocations,” said Christopher Burke, CEO of CBBEL. “So, it’s important for us to bring new options that make water loss management strategies easy for our customers to deploy.”
Aquify is a wholly owned subsidiary of Exelon Corporation (NASDAQ: EXC), one of the leading electric and gas utility companies in the US, serving more than 10 million customers. Exelon’s utilities have led the smart grid movement, resulting in unprecedented reliability, resilience and sustainability to the power sector. Exelon founded Aquify to bring their utility operations experience and expertise to the nation’s water utilities.