The Pulse, SA’s breaking news blog: Severe weather warning as rain and strong winds lash SA

The Pulse, SA’s breaking news blog: Severe weather warning as rain and strong winds lash SA

AFTER a day of wind and rain — and with more coming — Adelaide is the coldest city in Australia.

The severe weather warning issued by the Bureau of Meteorology for the metropolitan area has been cancelled as the heavy rainband shifts towards the state’s South-East.

Mid North districts through to the Riverland remains on high alert with the potential for damaging winds and heavy rainfall.

At 4.30pm, Adelaide’s temperature was 13.2C, and dropping, the lowest temperature of all Australia’s major cities.

Adelaide’s weather as at 4.30pm.Source:Supplied

An overnight minimum of 11 is expected.

Thursday morning’s deluge kept emergency services busy, with flash flooding inundating houses, shops and roads across Adelaide.

Houses in Glenelg North and Modbury Heights, shops at Modbury North and an office in Hillcrest flooded during the downpour.

Part of a rumpus room roof collapsed at a Rostrevor property at about 10am.

The inclement weather also forced the closure of some southbound lanes on South Rd at Bedford Park.

Between 9am and midday, 5.2mm of rain was recorded at West Terrace and 7.8mm at Kent Town.

But the greatest rainfall was measured in the higher regions, with 15.6mm recorded at Mount Lofty and 12.4mm at Mount Crawford.

It prompted SA Police to urge motorists to slow down and take extra care when driving in the Adelaide Hills because rain was reducing visibility.

The wet and windy weather comes just days after the Bureau announced SA experienced its hottest April on record.

The state averaged a daily maximum temperature of 23.01C, beating its previous record of 22.99C in 2005.

South Australia also recorded its driest April since 2005, with total rainfall 78 per cent below average.

Meanwhile, Adelaide had its second warmest April in history, with its average maximum daily temperature reaching 26.2C, slightly cooler than in 1923 when the mercury averaged 26.9C.

Read more: Original Article

SA Water to put floating solar panels in Happy Valley water treatment plant to bring down power bills

FLOATING solar panels will occupy the Happy Valley water treatment plant as SA Water turns to renewable energy to cut down on its considerable water bills.

Water Minister Ian Hunter said the $10.5 million investment in solar panels would keep water bills as “low and stable as possible” but said it was too early to put a figure on how much households could save.

The measures are accompanied by three privately funded renewable energy trials as part of an ambitious plan to substantially slash SA Water’s power bill, reducing its net electricity costs to zero dollars by 2020.

SA Water’s annual water bill currently costs $55 million, but it hopes the new renewable energy initiatives will allow it to pump water when electricity prices are cheap and sell power back into the grid at times of high demand, bringing the overall cost to zero.

The plan involves:

FLOATING solar panels on the Happy Valley reservoir, set to be installed by French company Akuo Energy.

TRIALLING a 128KW flywheel energy storage system, developed by SA company Greenfields Energy.

$500,000 towards a 100KW solar pv, to be paired with a 50 KWh battery storage system, to be located at SA Water’s Crystal Brook depot.

SOLAR panels ot be installed across metropolitan Adelaide facilities, at a cost of $10 million.

The State Government had already announced a $1.6 million grant for 1414 degrees Celsius to trial new silicon thermal storage technology at SA Water’s Glenelg Wastewater Plant.

SA Water chief executive Roch Cheroux said the trials would last for several months, with the total cost of the renewable energy initiatives to be determined by the success of the trial.

Read more: Original Article

Smart tech helps SA Water manage water network

South Australian utility SA Water says it has proven the role of advanced smart technology in managing an underground water network, to proactively identify and repair potential leaks and breaks before they escalate and affect customers and commuters.
According to SA Water, the first stage of its smart water network integrated more than 400 sensors across the Adelaide Central Business District, preventing 15 water main breaks or leaks since monitoring and collecting data began in July 2017.

Ahead of the Ozwater’18 conference in Brisbane, the smart network program’s architect, SA Water’s Manager of Water Assets, Dr Helen Edmonds, said the deployment was the largest in Australia.

“The combination and volume of sensors installed across the water network in Adelaide hasn’t been seen before, and is delivering outcomes and learnings that will be applicable right across the country,” she said.

“As engineers, we’ve been immersed in rich data that’s helping us make informed decisions, but as South Australians striving to deliver a world-class service for our customers, we’re making vital inroads to delivering a better customer experience.

“Although our network performance is among the best in Australia, we know that any water main break or service interruption has an impact on our customers, and we want to reduce that as much as possible.

“Identifying a potential leak and intervening has been hugely rewarding, but there’s also been a sense of accomplishment in analysing the data and understanding the immediacy of some sudden ruptures that didn’t offer any warning signals.”

Edmonds said the data was collected through 305 acoustic leak detection sensors, 34 pressure sensors of which 23 are transient loggers, 11 flow meters, three water quality monitors, and 100 smart meters on customer connections. The information is transmitted over long-term evolution and narrow band technologies to an analytics platform, at 5 to 15 minute intervals.

The acoustic sensors — or accelerometers — cover an average range of 150 metres and monitor around 50% of the water main network in the Adelaide CBD, with a focus on cast iron pipes in areas where the potential customer impact of a break is greater.

“The music of the network tells us a story, but the art and science of this combine in the algorithms we’ve built to filter an evolving leak from typical water usage sounds and the background noise of a busy city street,” Edmonds said.

She said insights had been gathered on the forces within and outside the network that could contribute to faults, such as pressure transients arising from customer activity.

“One of the transient loggers detected a recurring event with a consistent hydraulic character, happening on the same day and time, every week, and it turned out to be the result of a large building’s fire service being tested.

“Having this information meant we could work together with the building owner to calm the weekly testing process, and also with the technical regulator to amend design standards for future builds.

“Importantly, it means the customer will have far less chance of a water main break right outside their building, and the interruption this would cause their operations.”

An online portal allows smart meter customers to monitor their own water usage, but Edmonds said significant benefits had been realised by SA Water staff identifying abnormalities in customers’ consumption.

"We were able to alert a customer to 100 litres a minute being lost by a faulty float valve constantly refilling their building’s header tank, and the excess water just overflowing into the sewer. Left undetected until their next bill, the water loss alone in that case would have cost over $15 000 a month.”

Edmonds said the implementation had been so successful that further rollouts were planned later this year across both water and wastewater networks.

Read more: Original Article

Solar power to burn through SA Water’s energy costs

The state’s largest provider of water and sewage services plans to significantly reduce its electricity costs with an ongoing commitment to renewable energy.

An initial $10 million investment is the introduction to a comprehensive strategy aimed at achieving zero-net electricity costs by 2020.

SA Water is looking to install 152 megawatts of solar photo-volatic generation and 35 megawatt hours of energy storage over the next two years, at around 70 of its sights across the state.

“We are one of the largest electricity users in the state – we spend about $55 million on power every year,” said SA Water CEO Roch Cheroux. “The first step is to ask, what can we do to be in a position where our electricity cost is zero?

“What we are planning to do is a combination of three things: One is to increase our electricity production capacity, mainly with solar panels. The second idea is to increase our storage capacity. And the third is to use sophisticated analytical tools to manage our energy.”

The plan will involve a three-stage approach designed around the production, storage and analysis of power at SA Water’s facilities around the state. Initially starting with the installation of the solar panels, SA Water is already trialing various pilot projects for the production and storage stages of the process.

Working with Adelaide-based companies 1414 Degrees and Greenfields Energy, SA Water will use a combination of chemical battery storage, new thermal energy storage and flywheel mechanical energy storage systems.

“We’re now looking to hear from experienced an capable supplies who can help deliver arrays ranging in size from 100 kilowatts to 13 megawatts, at metropolitan and regional locations”.

An initial Expression of Interest with guidance from prospective vendors is now available through tenders.sa.gov.au.

The primary phases of the investment are being used to trial the pilot storage systems at several of SA Water’s facilities to determine the success of the three solutions in an attempt to optimise the storage of power for later use.

“The solar panels will come on stream quite quickly,” Cheroux said. What will happen in the second part is more the storage that we are currently testing with the chemical batteries at Crystal Brook, the thermal storage that is ongoing at Glenelg, and the mechanical storage in Hope Valley.

“We want to go through a few months of testing and piloting of these three solutions before we finalise the investment with storage.”

A third and final stage of the process will involve analytics to manage the different production systems, and the energy storage system. SA Water plans to use the analysis to establish further plans moving forward.

“Analytics is critically important to optimising the system,” Cheroux said. “Having the support mechanism to tell us when it is better to buy in the market rather than produce, or whether we need to discharge the storage.”

Since the announcement of the initiative in December last year, work has almost been completed on a $500,000 100-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system and 50-kilowatt-per-hour battery storage at SA Water’s Crystal Brook facilities.

The strategy complements SA Water’s existing renewable energy systems at the Bolivar and Glenelg Wastewater Treatment Plants.

“We’ve already got a number of things that we are doing to manage and control our expenses. We are producing energy with biogas and hydroelectricity at our wastewater treatment plant,” Cheroux said. “We already have some of our plants that are nearly self-sufficient in terms of energy.”

While the initiative will dramatically reduce the amount SA Water is spending on power, it will also have an effect on the 1.6 million South Australians the provider serves.

“When we have been speaking to customers about it they have been very interested because the customers have been experiencing high electricity prices just as we do,” said Cheroux.

“They are very positive that we are doing something about it and getting to a solution where we could reduce our electricity bill to zero, and therefore have an impact on their water bill.”

Should SA Water achieve this goal, it will be the first utility in Australia to do so. Further investments will be heavily influenced by the success of the pilot trials to achieve the target of zero-net electricity costs within two years.

Read more: Original Article

Smart sensors reduce Adelaide's water leaks

An integrated network of more than 400 smart sensors spread across the Adelaide CBD has helped SA Water prevent 15 major breaks or water leaks since the system began collecting data in July 2017.

The network enables the utility to proactively identify and repair potential problems before they worsen and affect customers and commuters.

The program’s architect, SA Water Manager of Water Assets Dr Helen Edmonds, said the deployment is the largest of its kind in the country.

“The combination and volume of sensors installed across the water network in Adelaide hasn’t been seen before, and is delivering outcomes and learnings that will be applicable right across the country,” said Helen.

“As engineers, we’ve been immersed in rich data that’s helping us make informed decisions, but as South Australians striving to deliver a world-class service for our customers, we’re making vital in-roads to delivering a better customer experience.

“Although our network performance is among the best in Australia, we know that any water main break or service interruption has an impact on our customers, and we want to reduce that as much as possible.

“Identifying a potential leak and intervening has been hugely rewarding, but there’s also been a sense of accomplishment in analysing the data and understanding the immediacy of some sudden ruptures that didn’t offer any warning signals.”

The network comprises:

•     305 acoustic leak detection sensors
•     34 pressure sensors, of which 23 are transient loggers
•     11 flow meters
•     3 water quality monitors
•     100 smart meters on customer connections

    

Data from the sensors is transmitted over LTE and narrowband communications systems to an analytics platform at 5- to 15-minute intervals.

The acoustic sensors (accelerometers), which have an average range of 150 metres, monitor approximately 50% of the water main network in the CBD.

They are particularly focused on cast iron pipes located in areas where the potential impact of a break is highest.

Working with customers

The network has enabled SA Water to gain insights on the influences both within and outside of the network that can lead to faults, such as pressure transients from customer activity.

“One of the transient loggers detected a recurring event with a consistent hydraulic character, happening on the same day and time, every week, and it turned out to be the result of a large building’s fire service being tested,” said Edmonds.

“Having this information meant we could work together with the building owner to calm the weekly testing process, and also with the technical regulator to amend design standards for future builds.

“Importantly, it means the customer will have far less chance of a water main break right outside their building, and the interruption this would cause their operations,” she added.

While smart meter customers can monitor their water usage via an online portal, SA Water staff have already been able to identify abnormalities in customers’ consumption and suggest corrective action.

“We were able to alert a customer to 100 litres a minute being lost by a faulty float valve constantly refilling their building’s header tank, and the excess water just overflowing into the sewer,” said Edmonds.

“Left undetected until their next bill, the water loss alone in that case would have cost over $15,000 a month.”

According to Edmonds, the implementation had been so successful that further rollouts were planned for later this year across Adelaide’s water and wastewater networks.

“In just 10 months we’ve proven this combination of smart technology can effectively reduce the impact of water main breaks on our customers, so we now have an obligation to spread this benefit across as much of our network and customer base as possible,” she said.

SA Water was this year awarded Australian Digital Utility of the Year. Dr Edmonds will give a presentation on the smart water network at Ozwater’18 on Tuesday, 8 May, at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Read More: Original Article