One Water Strategies For New Braunfels Utilities
Rapidly growing community reveals new opportunities for demand forecasting
By Jacqueline Ashmore, Josef Benzaoui, Michael Grinshpun
January 2019
In 2018, leaders at New Braunfels Utility (NBU) near San Antonio, Texas grew concerned that the population’s projected annual 6 percent growth rate would push water demand beyond NBU’s capacity. This prompted the Institute for Sustainable Energy to identify and analyze demand management and conservation opportunities and make recommendations for utilities in Texas to apply principles of One Water to address growing populations, supply changes, and aging infrastructure.
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Key Findings and Recommendations
- Non-residential water consumption accounted for a larger portion of water demand than previously understood.
- Forecasting water demand for utilities requires an understanding of the differences between population-driven growth in residential and non-residential water consumption and the increasing efficiency of new residential fixtures.
- Assuming water use and fixture efficiency increase simultaneously, population growth will often result in an overestimate of future water demand.
- Utilities should prioritize reducing demand from their largest customer accounts, which typically represent a smaller group of customers driving the most demand and waste. By reducing water demand, utilities can avoid the costs of building new infrastructure in the long term and financial losses from being forced to increase supply to meet demand in the short term.
- Utilities can encourage customers to reduce their water consumption through outreach, rebates, ordinance changes, pre-development meetings, and long-term demand management strategies.