Camilla Dunham Whitehead

The Energy-Water Nexus and information exchange: challenges and opportunities

In the near future, the USA will be facing constraints on energy availability owing to the heightened demand for both energy and water, especially during droughts and summers. This is especially true in the American Southwest. Increasing stress on the inextricably linked resource availability of both water and energy can be mitigated with integrated planning. Exchanging data is an important component to current and future mitigation approaches within the Energy-Water Nexus (EWN). We describe the types of relationships that are formed in the US EWN, and address the data-sharing obstacles. Approaches to removing such obstacles are presented, based on case studies.

National and Regional Water and Wastewater Rates For Use inCost-Benefit Models and Evaluations of Water Efficiency Programs

Calculating the benefits and costs of water conservation or efficiency programs requires knowing the marginal cost of the water and wastewater saved by those programs. Developing an accurate picture of the potential cost savings from water conservation requires knowing the cost of the last few units of water consumed or wastewater released, because those are the units that would be saved by increased water efficiency. This report describes the data we obtained on water and wastewater rates and costs, data gaps we identified, and other issues related to using the data to estimate the cost savings that might accrue from water conservation programs. We identified three water and wastewater rate sources. Of these, we recommend using Raftelis Financial Corporation (RFC) because it: a) has the most comprehensive national coverage; and b) provides greatest detail on rates to calculate marginal rates. The figure below shows the regional variation in water rates for a range of consumption blocks. Figure 1A Marginal Rates of Water Blocks by Region from RFC 2004Water and wastewater rates are rising faster than the rate of inflation. For example, from 1996 to 2004 the average water rate increased 39.5 percent, average wastewater rate increased 37.8 percent, the CPI (All Urban) increased 20.1 percent, and the CPI (Water and Sewerage Maintenance) increased 31.1 percent. On average, annual increases were 4.3 percent for water and 4.1 percent for wastewater, compared to 2.3 percent for the All Urban CPI and 3.7 percent for the CPI for water and sewerage maintenance. If trends in rates for water and wastewater rates continue, water-efficient products will become more valuable and more cost-effective.

Determining benefits and costs of improved water heater efficiencies

Economic impacts on individual consumers from possible revisions to US residential water heater energy-efficiency standards are examined using a life-cycle cost (LCC) analysis. LCC is the consumers cost of purchasing and installing a water heater and operating it over its lifetime. This approach makes it possible to evaluate the economic impacts on individual consumers from the revised standards. The methodology allows an examination of groups of the population which benefit or lose from suggested efficiency standards. The results show that the economic benefits to consumers are significant. At the efficiency level examined in this paper, 35% of households with electric water heaters experience LCC savings, with an average savings of

Surveys of Microwave Ovens in U.S. Homes

106, while 4% show LCC losses, with an average loss of

Estimates of Savings Achievable from Irrigation Controller

40 compared to a pre-standard LCC average of

Field-Monitoring of Whole-Home Dehumidifiers: Initial Results of a Pilot Study

2565. The remainder of the population (61%) are largely unaffected.

Water Data Report: An Annotated Bibliography

LBNL-5947E Surveys of Microwave Ovens in U.S. Homes Alison Williams, Hung-Chia (Dominique) Yang, Bereket Beraki, Louis-Benoit Desroches, Scott J. Young, Chun Chun Ni, Henry Willem, Jeffery B. Greenblatt, and Camilla Dunham Whitehead Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA Sally M. Donovan Consultant, Melbourne, Australia Environmental Energy Technologies Division December 2012 This work was supported by the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Building Technology, State, and Community Programs, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

Development of the household sample for furnace and boilerlife-cycle cost analysis

This paper performs a literature review and meta-analysis of water savings from several types of advanced irrigation controllers: rain sensors (RS), weather-based irrigation controllers (WBIC), and soil moisture sensors (SMS).The purpose of this work is to derive average water savings per controller type, based to the extent possible on all available data. After a preliminary data scrubbing, we utilized a series of analytical filters to develop our best estimate of average savings. We applied filters to remove data that might bias the sample such as data self-reported by manufacturers, data resulting from studies focusing on high-water users, or data presented in a non-comparable format such as based on total household water use instead of outdoor water use. Because the resulting number of studies was too small to be statistically significant when broken down by controller type, this paper represents a survey and synthesis of available data rather than a definitive statement regarding whether the estimated water savings are representative.

Life-cycle cost analysis of energy efficiency design options for residential furnaces and boilers

Field-Monitoring of Whole-Home Dehumidifiers: Initial Results of a Pilot Study Henry Willem, Camilla Dunham Whitehead, Chun Chun Ni, Venessa Tavares, Thomas Alan Burke, Moya Melody, and Sarah Price Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts Department Environmental Energy Technologies Division Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, CA 94720 November 2013 This work was supported by the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Building Technology, State, and Community Programs, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 .

Saving Water Saves Energy

This report and its accompanying Microsoft Excel workbook summarize water data we found to support efforts of the Environmental Protection Agency s WaterSense program. WaterSense aims to extend the operating life of water and wastewater treatment facilities and prolong the availability of water resources by reducing residential and commercial water consumption through the voluntary replacement of inefficient water-using products with more efficient ones. WaterSense has an immediate need for water consumption data categorized by sector and, for the residential sector, per capita data available by region. This information will assist policy makers, water and wastewater utility planners, and others in defining and refining program possibilities. Future data needs concern water supply, wastewater flow volumes, water quality, and watersheds. This report focuses primarily on the immediate need for data regarding water consumption and product end-use. We found a variety of data on water consumption at the national, state, and municipal levels. We also found several databases related to water-consuming products. Most of the data are available in electronic form on the Web pages of the data-collecting organizations. In addition, we found national, state, and local data on water supply, wastewater, water quality, and watersheds.