Managing Peak Demand Through Customer Engagement

The Beaufort-Jasper Water & Sewer Authority (BJWSA) serves this fast-growing area, providing drinking water to over 70,000 accounts and sewer services to 43,000 accounts. BJWSA operates two drinking water plants: the Chelsea plant and the Purrysburg plant, located north and south of the Broad River, respectively. Together, the plants can produce 39 million gallons per day (MGD), but as the population grew, it wasn't enough to keep up with peak demand.

"The growth we've seen since 2006 is unprecedented," said Linda Tillery, Chief of Customer Care, BJSWA. "Beaufort County is growing by 30% and Jasper County by 35%. We are averaging over 200 new meters per month."

The Purrysburg plant was especially impacted. "You have a 15 MGD plant that, in the peak hours, is pushing 32 million gallons," explained Tillery. The increased usage was causing pipe scouring in the distribution system. "We started getting a lot of discolored water calls," she said.

Plans to expand the Purrysburg plant to 30 MGD were underway, but the project would not be completed until 2025. In the meantime, BJWSA had to find another strategy for meeting demand.

A Case of the Mondays

"Beaufort County and Jasper County are large irrigators," Tillery said, especially during the summer between April and August. A review of the system's usage patterns further revealed that the highest demand occurred on Mondays between 4 a.m. and 9 a.m. "Our challenge was to see if we could get those customers off of those times," she stated.

To get a more comprehensive understanding of customers' consumption patterns, BJWSA installed E-Series G2^® Ultrasonic meters with ORION^® Cellular endpoints from Badger Meter. The solution automatically delivers a reading to the utility every 15 minutes, providing detailed insights about how and when customers are using water.

"That's a lot of information," Tillery noted. To manage and analyze all the new data, BJWSA leveraged BEACON^® Software as a Service (SaaS), also from Badger Meter. The software enabled BJWSA to quickly identify consumption trends and unusual usage patterns.

BJWSA knew, however, that the key to influencing customers' usage patterns and reducing the high demand on Mondays would be the customers themselves. "We decided to do [an] irrigation campaign to help those customers who were complaining about discolored water," Tillery said.

BJWSA started by targeting customers who were irrigating between 4 a.m. and 9 a.m. on Mondays. "We wanted to send them information and ask them to avoid irrigating during those peak hours," Tillery explained. "Our public affairs group is really great, and they came up with a bunch of things campaign-wise to help us.”

BJWSA used social media, sent newsletters and emails, engaged with local homeowners’ associations and conducted in-person meetings to educate its customers and explain how adjusting their irrigation schedules would help the utility manage peak demand and address the discoloration issues. BJWSA even designed and distributed promotional magnets and stickers to remind customers when (and when not) to irrigate.

Perhaps most importantly, however, BJWSA encouraged customers to sign up for the BEACON-integrated EyeOnWater^® consumer engagement app so they could monitor their own usage. EyeOnWater delivers easy-to-understand consumption graphs and configurable leak notifications that give customers the power to manage their water use. As an added incentive, the utility devised a pledge program: customers who promised to observe "No Watering Mondays" would be entered into a random drawing for a bill credit.

"It worked," Tillery said. By the time the campaign ended, BJWSA had 13,000 customers signed up for EyeOnWater. Water demand on Mondays was reduced by 1.1 million gallons and complaints about discolored water dropped dramatically.

"The more you know, the better off you are as a customer," Tillery noted. "They want to help us. They want to be compliant—and we appreciate that."

Far-Reaching Impact

Prior to adopting a cellular solution, BJWSA had drive-by meters that only provided readings once a month. "We were getting the total for the entire period," said Juan Martinez, AMI/AMR Technical Specialist, BJWSA. A monthly read wasn't very helpful for pinpointing leaks. "Catching something that happened in the past is impossible," he said. "Unless you actually saw an issue going on at the customer's location while you were there, it was a lot of guessing and pulling at straws."

With daily updates from BEACON, BJWSA can continually monitor its system and quickly spot anomalies. "If we see an issue, we can give a phone call, we can send an email, we can go to the physical location and speak with these customers," Martinez said, addressing the problem immediately instead of a month later.

"When you have leaks, especially if it's a bad leak, you know it's going to affect your bill," Tillery explained. That's when EyeOnWater really shines "because you can show [the customer] what is going on at the location, when it's taking place and put that tool in their hands," she said.

Having access to customers' real-time consumption data has made life a lot easier for BJWSA's customer service staff as well. "It's actually been a game-changer," said Jane McCormick, Customer Service Manager, BJWSA. If a customer calls about a high bill, "now we can let them know that the pattern of usage that we're seeing is consistent with irrigation, for example."

"Calls aren't lasting 30–40 minutes anymore," Tillery added. "You can go online, see what's happening, and tell the customer, 'I see your irrigation is coming on at 5 a.m., three times a week for three hours. You might want to check into that.' End of conversation."

Sometimes customers will call because they've received a leak alert. "We can go to EyeOnWater and see what type of usage they're having," McCormick explained.

This is especially helpful for residents who might be out of town. "We can ask them if they'd like us to turn water off at the meter until they return," said McCormick. "Our customers are very grateful for that."

The new system came in particularly handy in December 2022. "We had a record cold snap around Christmas," Tillery recalled. "Our leaks suddenly went from about 3,200 to over 6,000. We started seeing pressure drops in the system." BJWSA sent emails to over 6,000 customers, asking them to check their locations because they were showing constant consumption. "That event caused a lot of customers to sign up for EyeOnWater," she said. "Nothing like living it to make you realize how valuable of a tool it is."

In addition to its customer service and billing departments, other parts of the BJWSA organization are finding value in the visibility BEACON provides. There is a lot of interest from the engineering department, Tillery said. "When developers come in looking at a neighborhood where they're building and want to what the water demand is for that particular area, we can track that," she said. "We can give them that information so they'll know roughly about what the capacity should be for that project."

With BEACON, BJWSA can keep tabs on meters in its hydrant and construction portable meter program. "We no longer have to worry about them calling in a reading or taking a meter out of our service area," Tillery explained. "We have the meters on BEACON, and we also have them on GPS, which allows us to geofence them. So, we always know where they are and we're always going to get a reading."

Although the original objective for rolling out EyeOnWater was to reduce peak demand on Mondays, BJWSA and its customers have realized that the benefits of BEACON and the cellular meters extend well beyond irrigation control. With near real-time data at its fingertips, BJWSA has transformed customer service and introduced operational efficiencies that will serve its fast-growing community well into the future.