ENERGY USE IN WISCONSIN?S DRINKING WATER UTILITIES:MONITORING CHANGES SINCE YEAR 2000

Abstract

The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin regulates municipal drinking water utilities and provides water and energy data for each utility for each year. Before this report was completed, there was not a state-wide analysis of energy consumption by drinking water utilities aside from the annual fact sheets that provided total and mean water pumping and energy consumption of drinking water utilities by the Public Service Commission. The purpose of this report was to go more in depth with the available data, in order to investigate the variations in energy consumption among drinking water utilities. This report utilized information from the High Capacity Well Database provided by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and United States Geological Survey to relate well and aquifer data to energy consumption. This report also sought for abrupt changes in energy consumption that coincided with changes in treatment systems and reported changes that were statistically significant. Several icrofiltration and ultrafiltration utilities experienced a shift in energy consumption that coincided with the implementation of the treatment system. This report provides additional data on drinking water utilities to facilitate in providing recommendations to drinking water utilities and the Public Service Commission for future work on increasing energy sustainability in drinking water systems.