Barwon Water is helping businesses such as GeelongPort make significant water savings through its Business Water Savings Grants Program.
After successfully applying for funding through the program, GeelongPort installed seven data loggers at their site.
A year later, the loggers have enabled the business to identify leaks of various sizes around the port precinct, leading to water savings of thousands of kilolitres.
Nelson Taylor, GeelongPort’s environment specialist, said a recently detected leak in the port could have resulted in megalitres of lost water if not for the data loggers.
“The loggers, which are attached to a portal so staff have 24/7 access to usage data, recently alerted us to a leak of 1.85kl per minute that occurred under one of the port’s berths,” Mr Taylor said.
“Without the logger, the water loss could have amounted to 18.6 ML if gone unnoticed for a week.”
The port checks the data regularly, Mr Taylor said, which allows it to pick up and investigate any extended periods of unexpected water flow and helps to report on the efficiency of environmental KPIs and goals.
“This process has helped us locate and repair four large leaks over the past 12 months, some of which may have run unnoticed in underground pipes for extended periods of time had the data loggers not been installed.
“With the loggers providing real time data and alerts, unusual consumption is noticed immediately and investigated.
“The data from the loggers is also matched with ship and operational movements to understand how water is being used, resulting in efficiency improvements with our general water consumption.”
The program’s grants provide up to 50 percent of the direct costs of projects that deliver permanent reductions in drinking water consumption, and Barwon Water General Manager Customers, Community and Strategy Laura Kendall said GeelongPort’s outcomes were a great example of what businesses could achieve.
“The grants are designed to help high-water-use businesses save our precious drinking water resources and save themselves money at the same time,” she said.
“Well done on GeelongPort for coming up with a great water saving project.”
