Industrial companies: what are the advantages of a water metering plan?

With the increase in issues around water for manufacturers and in particular the reduction of water consumption in factories, defining a water metering plan is also becoming crucial for industrial companies. But why have one? What is its use? And what are its main advantages?

Define a water metering plan for each industrial site

Manufacturers often already have one or more water meters on their industrial sites. But having isolated meters is not the same as having a working metering plan. While these can be useful, they will not provide an overall view of a plant's water consumption.

Before defining a water metering plan, it is important to take into account the context of each site, the issues and the objectives. There is therefore a first necessary inventory work, which makes it possible to take into account the existing and the need.

After having carried out this inventory, several important questions arise. Where are the sensors located? Are they communicating? Do they cover the majority of uses? And if this is not the case, what are the uses that must be followed in priority?

This preparatory work makes it possible to create a dynamic on its industrial site, by questioning and concretely measuring the issues related to the consumption or treatment of water.

Set up your water metering plan

Once the inventory has been completed, manufacturers can define their water consumption metering strategy. Very concretely, this is the moment when everyone matches their needs and objectives with regard to their available investment budget.

Installing additional meters on an industrial site, making old meters communicating or even replacing obsolete instruments, the metering strategy must be tailor-made and may evolve to take into account the development of each activity.

In parallel with the implementation of a water metering plan, it is also possible to trace all the data in a supervision. In this case, site managers have the option of equipping themselves with monitoring dedicated to water consumption or using monitoring already in place in their plant. It is, for example, possible to feed back the data in an energy supervision in order to have a single tool to monitor and measure all the water and energy consumption of its industrial site.

What is a water metering plan used for?

Installing sensors is not an end. The implementation of a metering plan is above all a tool for defining an effective action plan. Indeed, thanks to a better knowledge of water consumption, it is possible to identify processes or utilities on which to carry out actions, prioritize projects according to their projected impact and then monitor the results actually observed. It is therefore a major tool for decision-making and reporting of the results obtained.

Moreover, with the context (increased droughts, scarcity of water resources, etc.), having a metering plan can also be an important tool in relations with public authorities such as the DREALs or prefectures, to justify efforts to consumption reduction.

Tribune by Frédéric Boisard, Automation and Digital Service Manager at CertiNergy & Solutions (LinkedIn).