New technology helps EWEB customers prevent 170M+ gallons of water waste in 2024
It’s that time of year again when the great wetness returns, soaking our soils with rain, rain, and more rain! And just like any sponge, our soils expand as they absorb the moisture.
Expanding soil means shifting earth – and that moving earth can break pipes underground.
“This is the time of year when we find the most leaks in customers’ water systems,” says EWEB Customer Solution Specialist Jeffrey Petersen.
When pipes break, they can be hard to notice. How do we detect a leaking pipe underground that is leaking water into wet soil?
In some cases, large leaks can cause water to bubble up, or the ground to become soggy and squishy.
But most leaks don’t leave obvious signs. Instead, we detect leaks by measuring their impacts.
Unfortunately, these impacts also affect customers’ wallets. When a leak goes undetected, it allows water to continuously flow through the meter, even when customers aren’t using it. Any leak, no matter how small, increases the monthly water bill. Even a small, slow leak can accumulate significant water usage over time, leading to unexpected charges.
EWEB measures how much water we deliver to your home through the water meter, which works like a ticket counter at the entrance to your home’s plumbing system. It records the flow of water into your home so EWEB knows how much to bill you each month.
For most of EWEB’s 113 years of service to the people of Eugene, EWEB meter readers would visit your home, look at the cumulative count on your water meter, and subtract last month’s reading to measure how much water flowed into your home to calculate your bill. (The average monthly usage for EWEB customers inside the city limits is 9,000 gallons/month.)
Reading the meter once a month solely measures volume and so mechanical meters are not effective leak detectors. Leaks would only be noticed at the end of the month and only when a customer’s bill is significantly higher than normal. Small leaks could go unnoticed for years.
Over the past several years, EWEB has upgraded outdated, mechanical meters with “smart” meters that transmit usage data every four hours over a secure wireless network.
“It’s like a text message every 4 hours,” Petersen said.
Smart meters provide regular updates on water usage, helping customers identify unusual patterns and potential leaks. In a home with no leaks, usage should drop to zero gallons when all the faucets, spigots, showers and toilets are off.
If the smart meter detects water flowing for 48 hours straight, EWEB sends alerts to customers to encourage them to assess their water system to find and fix the leak.
“Since implementing our smart water meter Leak Detection program, we’ve sent more than 18,000 notifications to customers about their continuous water flow events,” Petersen said. “In 2024 alone, customers have saved more than 170 million gallons of water.”
An EWEB Leak Detection notification shows a commercial customer’s variable water usage, including a continuous consumption baseline of approximately 120gal./hr., indicating a likely leak starting in August 2024 (as shown by mouse cursor). The usage spikes in the early hours of each day likely indicate irrigation. EWEB’s daily water production can average up to 50M gal/day during the summer due to irrigation, emphasizing the importance of “WaterWise” landscaping for conserving water in our area.
Every day, EWEB treats, pumps, and distributes an average of 23 million gallons of water. These operations account for about 70% of electricity use among EWEB facilities, so smart meter leak detection helps reduce both water waste and service costs.
These savings translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thanks to smart meters, these savings are shared by the whole community, but only if customers take action on their notifications.
EWEB sends automated phone calls and emails to notify customers about their continuous consumption.
“Customers who want to prevent wasted water and save money on their bills should make sure their EWEB account has the correct phone number and email address and that EWEB’s emails don’t go to their spam folders,” Petersen said.
A third and final notice is a letter mailed to the address.
“Then it’s up to the customers to go about the standard leak due diligence. If they go through that and they can’t locate the leak, they can set up an appointment through water troubleshooters,” Petersen said.
EWEB also offers financial assistance programs to help customers manage the unexpected expense of a catastrophic leak. Customers who resolve leaks in a timely manner may qualify for one leak adjustment on water charges every 3 years if the repair is made within 60 days of the first notice.
As the rains continue to fall and the ground swells, it’s up to all of us to be on the lookout for leaks – and ensure we aren’t wasting our water: our most precious resource.
This article is part of a 3-part series about how smart meter technology improves EWEB's operational efficiencies: Smart meters make UO move-in easier
