BlueIQ

The Toronto Water Transmission System serves the City of Toronto and southern portion of York Region, and is supplied primarily by four water filtration plants located at the north shore of Lake Ontario. Serving a population of four million, it is the largest water system in Canada and one of the largest in North America.

While the City of Toronto and York Region provide the water delivery requirements to customers in a cost effective and uninterrupted manner, the complexity of the water system and energy tariff structure present opportunities for optimizing the pumping strategy to minimize operational energy costs in real-time.

BlueIQ is a software solution that accomplishes the objective of minimizing water pumping costs while meeting the required water quality and level of service for delivery to customers. The solution integrates with the SCADA system and uses a variety of other real-time input data feeds including the established water hydraulic model.

BlueIQ by IBI Group has been in operation since 2015. Toronto Hydro, the local energy distribution company, and Toronto Water have verified a reduction of approximately 8 million kWh per year equating to over $1 million in cost savings through reduced kWh consumption alone. There are additional system-wide cost reductions from managing time-of-use kWh energy prices, peak kW demand charges, and the various source production costs.