Initiatives for utilizing renewable energy in water supply treatment

Abstract

Maintaining a safe and reliable public water supply uses massive amounts of energy, prompting calls for energy saving measures. The Yokohama Water Works Bureau has established the goal of building a water supply system that is environmentally friendly by implementing a variety of initiatives, starting with efforts in renewable energy. These efforts have featured installing solar power and micro hydropower generation facilities at our purification plants and distribution reservoirs. The Yokohama water treatment facilities include purification plants based on gravity systems (Nishiya and Kawai plants) and pumped systems (Kosuzume plant). As the purification plants employing gravity systems place a smaller load on the environment, we use them as effectively as we can. When it was time to refurbish the distribution pumps, we reviewed the pump control system and identified initiatives for reducing pumped system power consumption.