Here is a follow-up story on Aquacue’s 1st pilot: “Results released by the water district this week show that those who got the feedback used 20 percent less water compared with the same period the year before…..The devices used in the study are manufactured by Los Gatos-based Aquacue and are attached to customers’ water meters. Known as Barnacles, the devices use wireless technology, the Internet and software to maintain constant water-use displays on users’ computer screens.” North County Times.
Today I tried to get MySQL 5.1.39 (this version offers UUID_SHORT) working with Python. First you must uninstall mysql, mysqlb, and then issue the following commands:
Over the past couple of days I was surprised at how much water the Aquacue Barnacle was reporting that we were using. The Barnacle was reporting over 80 gallons per minutes. Initially I though this was a false alert as we had just changed the software. But after some investigation that included help from San Jose Water Company we found the leak under the house. The Barnacle was right after all. Here is the proof of the leak:
The Barnacle reported water usage matched the water meter to 99.44% accuracy. The water pipe connecting the water meter to the house was old rusty galvanized pipe and it had just given up being a pipe. The cost of repair $3500 (included digging the sidewalk and front yard to get access to the water pipe and fixing the sidewalk, …). Damages to the house: none. Without the Barnacle I wouldn’t have found about the leak until after significant damage to the house was done. If I had acted immediately after the first Barnacle alert, the leak would have been detected in two hours.
You may find that after your Arduino program grows to be over 1000 lines of C code that the Arduino IDE becomes increasing more annoying to use. Well, you can use TextMate, but first you need to set yourself up for command line programming. There are some instructions on the Arduino site for this, but it is a bit out of date. Specifically, the Makefile that they recommend simply does not work. Read the rest of this entry »
You can configure the Telit GM cellular modem to set its internal real-time clock to the network time and have this value automatically updated each time the module is powered on. Here are the AT commands that you need to issue (I’ve omitted the AT response codes):
AT#SELINT=2
AT#NITZ=7,0 // sync network time to internal clock
AT&P0 // profile to be loaded on startup
AT&W0 // store the complete profile
AT#SHDN // this will turn off the modem
// now power on the modem
AT+CCLK? // get current time
// time response is +CCLK: "09/06/29,15:25:32-28"
// time format is yy/MM/dd,hh:mm:ss±zz
The command AT#NITZ=7,0 on your specific modem may not work, check the range of valid inputs for this command using AT#NITZ=?. If you’ve an old module from sparkfun.com then AT#NITZ=? may return #NITZ:(0-1),(0-7). More recent firmwares return #NITZ:(0-7)(0,1). If you’ve an older firmware, then you should set the AT#NITZ=1,0. The difference is that with newer firmware, you will also get the time-zone zz, not so with the older firmware. If you set AT#NITZ=7,1, then when the module gets the network time it is supposed to be echoed as an unsolicited message on the serial port. This didn’t work in my tests. Just as well. In this case, I rather not deal with unsolicited messages for network time, since I can use the real-time clock to get the time when I want to (getting unsolicited messages for AT+CREG is valuable, however).
What do I mean by older firmware? The GM862 module that I bought from sparkfun.com has this firmware:
Did you know that about 20% of energy in California is used to pump or treat water as compared to the 4% nationwide? That is a huge portion of the state’s total energy use. The reason for this is in California we have to move large quantities of water from a source to the final point of use. Water from the Bay delta is moved 400 miles to San Diego. It has be pumped over two mountains ranges along the way.
The term water energy intensity captures the amount of energy that is used to make/deliver water. For instance, in East Bay MUD water energy intensity is 1.25 MWH per Million Gallons of water (based on 2006 numbers). EBMUD needs to pump water up the Oakland and Berkeley hills and that accounts for a significant portion of the energy use in their water.
The relationship between water and energy has been known and studied for a while (e.g., see the pioneering work of Professor Wilkinson’s on the energy intensity of water), but this information still appears to be largely ignored. There are few if any real bridges between the water and energy industry or professional silos. To better manage energy, you need to understand how the biggest customer, water agencies, are using the energy.
There are four main energy uses in a typical water system:
Pumps to extract ground water and to deliver water from source to a final point of use.
Water treatment and distribution with in a service area.
On-site water pumping, treatment and thermal inputs (heating and cooling).
Waste water collection and treatment.
EPA offers a top 10 list of ways to manage water. The best way to manage water is to Meter, Measure, and Monitor the water use for each building or facility. This information can help detect leaks and the knowledge of water usage will lead to greater water efficiency.
In commercial buildings, the main user of water & energy are cooling towers. Some use as much as 30K gallons of water per day. Metering the quantity of water put into and discharged from the cooling tower provides information that helps better manage the efficiency of the cooling tower.
Irrigation often accounts for 50% of a facility’s total water use. So minimizing the water used for irrigation will have a significant impact to the overall amount of water used.
According to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, all Federal buildings are required to measure and verify energy and water usage and savings. The list of Best Management Practices is well worth reading.
