Effective Utility Management (EUM) principles identify the ten core attributes of sustainably operated and effectively managed water utilities.[i] Whether you’re pursuing AWWA certification for adherence with their Utility Management Standards, or you’re just using the EUM framework to structure your strategic business goals and objectives, motor management supports your EUM implementation on the following four attributes:
- Operational optimization. This EUM attribute encourages participating water utilities to “minimize resource use [and] loss” and to “maintain awareness of information and operational technology developments” that yield “sustainable performance improvements.”[ii]
Reducing your second largest cost center by adopting proven motor management best practices certainly qualifies as a sustainable performance improvement: it decreases your overall energy resource consumption and reduces your energy waste (losses), increasing the efficiency of your operation, and typically pays for itself within two years.
- Infrastructure stability. This EUM attribute requires you to “maintain and enhance the condition of all assets over the long-term at the lowest possible lifecycle cost and acceptable risk consistent with customer, community, and regulator-supported service levels, and with anticipated growth and system reliability goals.”[iii]
Motor management programs consider your motors’ total lifecycle costs when evaluating repair versus replace opportunities for your motors and motor-driven equipment. This helps reduce your motor’s capital, operating, and maintenance expenses.Additionally, this EUM attribute encourages coordinating “asset repair, rehabilitation, and replacement efforts” with the community “to minimize disruptions and other negative consequences.”[iv]To avoid unscheduled downtime that may cause service disruptions, many water utilities proactively repair or replace critical motors using a policy based on the motors’ run-hours. While this strategy reduces downtime, it increases maintenance and capital expenses by repairing or replacing motors before they need it. Motor management programs that incorporate condition monitoring enable you to avoid unscheduled downtime due to motor failures while maximizing the life of that asset.
- Financial viability. This EUM attribute requires water utilities to “understand full life-cycle costs” and “maintain an effective balance between long-term debt, asset values, operations and maintenance expenditures, and operating revenues” with the goal of “establish[ing] predictable rates—consistent with community expectations and acceptability.”[v]Motor management supports this attribute in three ways: First, with ever-increasing electric utility rates, motor management’s ability to reduce your energy spend helps you to keep your rates predictable. Second, motor management programs consider motors’ total lifecycle costs when deciding when to repair and replace motor-driven assets, which helps you to balance their capital, operating, and maintenance expenses. Finally, through their focus on condition monitoring and appropriate preventative maintenance, motor management programs extend the useful life of your assets, allowing you to right-size your maintenance program today while reducing your capital replacement and rehabilitation costs in the long term.
- Community sustainability. This EUM attribute requires water utilities to be “cognizant of and attentive to the impacts its decisions have on current and long-term future community and watershed health and welfare,”[vi] including “efficiently us[ing] water and energy resources.”[vii]Consuming energy causes harmful greenhouse gas emissions (categorized as Scope II emissions if you report your carbon footprint). Studies indicate that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to the increasing frequency of anomalous weather, rising sea levels, decreasing Arctic Sea ice formation, and other recent changes in global weather patterns.[viii] Therefore, reducing your energy consumption helps your community mitigate current and future climate changes, whether your municipality is experiencing record heat waves, Polar Vortices, floods, droughts, or an increased frequency of 100+ year storm events.
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[i] EUM
[ii] EUM
[iii] EUM
[iv] EUM
[v] EUM
[vi] EUM
[vii] EUM
[viii] National Climate Assessment