Eric is a senior project manager at Garver where he serves as the Water and Energy Practice Leader. He specializes in delivering sustainable infrastructure solutions through optimized hydraulic systems and optimized treatment processes. In 2019, Eric was selected for the Water Research Foundation’s 12-person Energy Advisory Committee where he advises the group on energy efficiency and process optimization projects. In 2022, Eric was selected to the AWWA M83 - Energy Management of Pumping and Treatment Processes design manual committee and is the co-author of Chapter 3 – Managing Energy in Pumping Processes, along with Dr. Tom Walksi. Eric is a certified Pump Systems Assessment Professional (PSAP) through the Hydraulics Institute, and he also an instructor in the PSAP course offered through HI. Being PSAP certified allows Eric to set the standard for pump systems assessments and optimization techniques, leading to energy efficient and reliable systems.

For years, traditional asset management utilizes ASHRAE Level 1 audits where a visual assessment of a critical process components, such as pumps, blowers, filters, clarifiers, tanks, pipes etc. are performed. The engineer develops an inventory list and a risk register by coupling the field assessment data with the historical maintenance logs. This risk register is used to systematically evaluate risks, define their priority and potential impact, and document mitigation strategies with their respective costs. But does this tell the entire story? For electro-mechanical equipment the answer is “NO”. This presentation will reveal how energy intensity mapping and wire to water efficiency testing can significantly enhance the LOF accuracy.
Often a weathered, 12-year-old pump that was, and still is, properly designed for the application has a much higher wire-to-water efficiency than a 2-year-old pump that was improperly designed or operated. As such, the remaining life of the 12-year-old pump could be significantly greater than the improperly designed 2-year-old pump. This does not consider the fact that the electrical costs associated with operating an inefficient pump often overshadows the maintenance costs.
A better way to evaluate the “true” remaining useful life, or the fitness, of critical electro-mechanical equipment and related processes is to integrate energy management strategies into the asset management protocol. Aspects of an energy management master plan, such as energy intensity ranking of facilities, can help prioritize the sites with higher kWh/MG or kW/MGD as locations that should be evaluated first, because these are the sites that poorly utilize electricity comparatively. An asset that does not utilize electricity efficiently to pump, treat or distribute water is an asset that will likely experience excessive maintenance and near-term failure, while also consuming excessive amounts of electricity resulting in high operating costs. Determining the baseline efficiency of internal pumping/aeration loads for high energy intensity sites, developing suggestions to help improve efficiencies and quantifying the operational savings into the replacement cost of the asset brings a new light to the business case. Often the improvement recommendations, or energy efficiency measures (EEMs), can be non-invasive like addition of an air release valve or changing the billing tariff structure of the site, to more invasive EEMs like pump/blower replacement.
This presentation will cover:
• The basics integrating energy management (EM) into asset management (AM)
• How to deploy wire-to-water and wire-to-air testing
• Interpreting the results
• Example EEMs
• Determining energy and operational cost savings
• Integrating electric utility Demand Side Rebate (DSM) program rebate incentives into EM/AM to help improve business case replacement
• Case studies