Meniscus benchmarking projects in the Water Industry
The benchmarking of water and wastewater treatment plant at Site Level, or preferably at Process Level, is a key tool for the water industry to use to help improve performance and to reduce costs - in particular to reduce energy costs.
Meniscus is active is both Site and Process level benchmarking and has a number of projects in both areas and are always looking for new Water Companies to join.
For access to Site Level energy benchmarks for 386 wastewater treatment plant
click here. This is
free to any Water Company
For access to current Process Level Benchmarking projects
click here. Example of
activated sludge plant aeration power use benchmark.
Some typical questions that we get asked - click the links for more information:
1. What is the difference between Site and Process Level Benchmarks?
2. Why do you think that Process Level benchmarks are better?
3. How frequently should data be collected?
4. What is the difference between this work and the The International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET)?
The recent Business Case 3 "Energy Efficient Water & Wastewater Treatment" written by the Environmental Knowledge Transfer Network of the University of Oxford (published January 2008) clearly sees Benchmarking as being one of the Critical Elements in achieving the goal of energy efficient water & wastewater treatment -
click here for link.
"Gather energy/electricity data at a process level to enable the industry to set sensible, achievable targets. Model the data to measure net environmental impact of any action." Page 31
Meniscus has been active in this area for over five years and has continually focused on the importance of Process level as against Site level benchmarks. The former are more specific (Processes might be: Activated sludge plant, UV treatment plant, anaerobic digesters, sludge thickening plant) and the resultant benchmarks are much more relevant and meaningful.
What is the difference between Site and Process Level Benchmarks?
This really depends on what you want to use the benchmarks for.
Site Level
If you want an overview of how your overall performance compares to other companies or to get an idea if Site A uses more energy per unit or flow, population equivalent or tonne BOD etc than Site B then Site Level benchmarks may be suitable. The benchmarks can then be used to rank performance and you can focus on the top X% of sites. The main drawback is that it is very hard to meaningfully compare one site with another. Both will have a complete mix of processes on them, some will have inlet pumping or final effluent pumping others will not, some will have sludge processing others not etc. Therefore you can easily end up comparing two sites that are inherently different even if both sites use an activated sludge process to treat the wastewater. Generally the underlying data required is readily available.
Process level
Process Level benchmarks seek to overcome the main drawback of Site Level benchmarks by comparing the performance of the individual process. So regardless of what other processes are used on a site you can compare just, for example, the activated sludge process across a number of sites. This inherently makes the information much more meaningful and most importantly starts to provide operation staff which some indication of WHY their process is using more energy, chemicals etc. With enough activated sludge plant sites in the sample you can filter by surface aeration vs diffused aeration, nitrifying vs not nitrifying etc. However, Process benchmarks are more costly and complex to determine due primarily to the difficulty in accessing the underlying data.
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Why do you think that Process Level benchmarks are better?
It really comes back to the reason that you are benchmarking. Our experience is that most companies want to use benchmarking as a way to reduce, primarily, energy use. In this case Site Level benchmarks are just too crude. The purpose of benchmarking is to allow you to focus on the worst performing sites, to understand why this is the case and, if practically feasible, make changes to improve performance. This is best down by benchmarking the most energy intensive processes and as you generate your 'quick wins' and save energy start to benchmark additional energy intensive processes. This generates the return on investment sought by the finance team whilst allowing you to progressively roll the benchmarking programme out throughout your organisation.
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How frequently should data be collected?
For Site Level then our experience is that annual data is sufficient. For Process Level then monthly is preferable since it generates the option of creating regular league tables of performance that gives incentive for operational personnel to make the changes required to improve their own site's performance.
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What is the difference between this work and the The International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET)?
IBNET, which is run by the World Bank, does excellent work in providing a benchmarking toolkit and sharing benchmarking data for organisations around the world. The key difference relates again to the reason for benchmarking and the 'resolution' of the benchmarks collected. The IBNET toolkit benchmarks a much much broader range or values such as water consumption and production, billing and collections, cost and staffing information but at a much higher level - either at Company or even Country level and as such the information is more likely to be of use to Corporate Finance, Politicians and the like.
Process Level Benchmarks are predominantly there for the local operations personnel and focused very specifically at improving performance and reducing cost.