Jacobs Digital Solutions Take Center Stage as Water Utilities Plan for the Future

During World Water Tech North America, Oct. 21 – 22, 2020, Jacobs Global Technology Leader for Digital Twins Garrett Owens, and Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD) Manager of Water Transmission Planning and Hydraulics Zach Huff will be speaking about a Jacobs-developed software application, named SupplyOpt, that integrates information sources, optimizes operations and explores candidate strategies. Their session is titled:

In response to rapidly growing population and a tripling of water demands throughout the past 40 years in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) Metroplex, TRWD partnered with Dallas Water Utilities (DWU) to implement the Integrated Pipeline Project (IPL). The IPL includes 150 miles of new pipeline and several new lake and booster pumping stations, greatly increasing the reliability and resilience of the DFW-area water supply which serves approximately 2.1 million residents.

To help TRWD optimize operations, Jacobs developed SupplyOpt. With a massive number of operational configurations, uncertainty in future hydrology, a complex energy costing structure and an average annual energy bill that can range from $10 to $30 million, there’s  great potential operation optimization and costs savings. SupplyOpt integrates and fuses hydraulic, hydrologic and energy data into an optimization framework, solving for the optimal (i.e. lowest cost) pumping strategy that satisfies all hydraulic and operational constraints. By identifying a subset of discrete operational recipes representing the optimal strategies across a gradient of possible hydrologic futures, SupplyOpt offers water resource managers and engineers the opportunity to integrate their tacit knowledge of the system into the decision-making process.

In addition to the cost savings, optimal operation leads to lower power consumption and thus energy and carbon savings. During their World Water Tech North America session, “Digital Solutions Enable Optimizing Pumping Strategies Despite Hydrologic Uncertainty,” Garrett and Zach will also discuss how

SupplyOpt leverages several interactive visualization dashboards to help TRWD understand and adapt optimal solutions. The discussion will also cover preliminary results achieved at TRWD, including potential cost savings of 5-10%, or up to $2 million per year.[1] Total lifecycle operating savings over 30 years is estimated at $22.5 million. Additionally, implementing SupplyOpt in parallel with IPL construction allowed operational optimization to be ready from day one and with no net impact on facility startup schedule.

More Digital Solutions Featured

Also during the virtual event, Jacobs Vice President and Global Director of Conveyance and Storage Susan Moisio, and Rich Nagel, vice president and lead for Jacobs’ Southern California water portfolio and strategy will host a roundtable discussion with  Deputy Director of Los Angeles County Department of Public Works Dan Lafferty and David Pedersen, general manager of Las Virgenes Municipal Water District and administering agent for the Las Virgenes-Triunfo Joint Powers Authority. During the “Emerging Tools to Bring Water Full Cycle” roundtable discussion, these two utility leaders will discuss emerging trends, impact of MS4 regulations and how Los Angeles is using advanced tools to help decide on economical, sustainable and operationally-sound solutions to achieve a truly full cycle water system.