CASE STUDY: Water leak in the car wash

The client, an owner of truck service center network with car washes, has decided to invest into pilot smart metering project. The reason – steadily high energy bills. Our goal was to detect sources of wasting and lower operating costs for the property.

Smart system has been implemented for main electricity, water and gas meters, as well as for water and heat sub-meters for truck car wash. Immediately, an abnormal state was revealed.

Consumption data from car wash water meter revealed a constant waste of 1,4 m3/h, an equivalent of fully opened water tap. The repair was performed in couple of days to fix the leak and naturally, consumption returned to normal.

Thanks to sophisticated water recycling systems, modern car washes can lower their consumption to absolute minimum. However, in case of defects that are not immediately visible the losses can be enormous.

Following graph demonstrates a comparison between consumption in first two weeks of monitoring.

First tree days show a constant inflated consumption, next four days(after the leak was fixed) demonstrate normal consumption values.

Taking average prices of water and sewage (according to CZSO data from year 2016, it around 75 Kč/m3) the cost of the leak over the weekend was 7275 Kč (285 Euro).

If the leak was spotted in monthly readings, the loss would be around 75 000 Kč (2,900 Euros), in a company where monthly data is not analyzed abnormal consumption would only be detected in the end of the year – meaning a loss of 1 million Kč (40 000 euros).

For this case, the investment for smart metering returned to the client in a single month.