When Water and Electricity Do Mix
01 July 2015 - 5:03AM
Business Wire
New Jersey American Water President Shares
Four Facts You Didn’t Know About the “Water-Energy Nexus”
It’s commonly understood that water and electricity don’t mix.
New Jersey American Water President William M. Varley told an
audience that is not always the case while delivering the keynote
remarks at the Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey’s Utility
Infrastructure Summit last Friday.“ There is a definite mutual
relationship, a water-energy nexus that exists between water and
power,” he said. “They depend a great deal on each other.” Varley
shared four facts about this nexus that most people are unaware
of.
1. It takes a lot of water to make power.
Nearly a quarter of the nation’s water is used for hydroelectric
generation. And, it takes a significant amount of power to move
water, as about 2 to 4 percent of the nation’s power is used to
treat and pump water and wastewater through the country’s complex
network of pipes
2. Water weighs 8.34 pounds per gallon. So it
takes a lot of energy to move water from its source to customers.
“The average household uses about 250 gallons of water, more than a
ton, each day,” said Varley. “We produce, on average, 330 million
gallons of treated water each day (about 1.4 million tons).
Delivering that to our customers requires a tremendous amount of
power.
3. About 25 percent of the treated water
produced across the nation never makes it to customers. It is lost,
largely through leaks in the network of aging water mains. “Think
of the amount of energy that is wasted in moving and then losing
that water,” he said. “If we can reduce the leaks, we will be
wasting less energy.
4. Nearly all of the water industry’s power
is used in pumping. Nationally, these pumps are, on average, only
about 50 percent efficient. “If all the pumps in the all the water
systems in the State of New Jersey could be upgraded and improved
to 80 percent efficiency, it would save enough energy to light the
homes in Camden County for six months,” said Varley.
New Jersey American Water, a wholly owned subsidiary of American
Water (NYSE: AWK) is the largest investor-owned water utility in
the state, providing high-quality and reliable water and/or
wastewater services to approximately 2.5 million people. Founded in
1886, American Water (NYSE: AWK) is the largest and most
geographically diverse publicly traded U.S. water and wastewater
utility company. With headquarters in Voorhees, N.J., the company
employs 6,400 dedicated professionals who provide regulated and
market-based drinking water, wastewater and other related services
to an estimated 15 million people in 47 states and Ontario, Canada.
More information can be found at www.amwater.com.
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version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150630006445/en/
New Jersey American WaterRichard Barnes,
856-782-2371richard.barnes@amwater.com
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