The energy manager at a popular UK food chain had problems obtaining water data from their many sites, and wanted an easy-to-use dashboard which could automatically generate reports for her, the regional managers, and individual branch managers.
In addition to indicating consumption, she wanted ways to prioritize water saving devices for high-waste branches, and automate efficiency measures by turning the water off during out-of-hours.
Our Investigation
Using FlowReporter, she could see the realtime and monthly consumption rate of all her branches in one screen, order by efficiency, and send access to regional and branch managers.
Analysing data from the first of the restaurants that had the device installed, with the use of the realtime graphs, we immediately identified that the site had a leak.
Using a technique in which the restaurant was split into individual zones, we identified the source to be a faulty water softener and could determine exactly how much this leak was costing them.
After fixing the faulty water softener, the restaurants water consumption dropped from around 4,000 litres per day to 2,100 litres per day – a reduction of almost 50%.
In addition to identifying hidden leaks, we setup alerts which were automatically sent out whenever a tap had been intermittently left on overnight, where the average flow rate was 6,500 litres per day.
Depending on the temperature of the tap, this would equate to an unbudgeted cost of between £8 and £50 per night. To combat this issue, the restaurant plans to automate water efficiency measures by using FlowReporter to turn the water off out-of-hours so this waste will always be mitigated.
Outcome
A single restaurant within the chain has successfully saved over £2,000 per year since the installation of the Leaknet device; the energy manager can now keep on top of all the restaurants with automatic reports, and specific alerting which goes directly to the relevant branch managers.
A “default-off” water plan is also in progress to mitigate all future leaks which occur when the sites are closed.
Take-Away
Continuous monitoring, coupled with automated alerts has helped the restaurant to spot problems, minimise waste and keep bills low.