Groundwater Grid: The Electric Smart Grid Offers Lessons Learned and Avoidable Pitfalls When Monitoring Groundwater

Smart Grid pilot programs demonstrate that the key to effectively lowering energy consumption and gaining new capacity from a limited supply is not the remote control of energy consuming devices. Instead, conservation is a consequence of putting useful usage and cost information into the hands of the people who pay or are stewards of systems that depend on it. A Wyoming 2010 Smart Grid program proved that with in-home energy insights, 50% of homeowners reduced power consumption by 30% within one year, saving their own money and reducing system risk.

Water policy-makers and advocates would be well-served to consider groundwater monitoring systems that learn lessons and avoid pitfalls unearthed by Smart Grid advocates. Groundwater information systems must meet local needs first, since consumers and the well-drillers they trust for services have an economic stake in the resource itself. Moreover, a groundwater information-sharing platform must have the ability to do more than just spot-check or land in time-stamped studies. Groundwater monitoring must be designed to allow anyone with a well to see not just their own impact on the resource, but the bigger picture too: resource health, trends, factors that contribute to risk.

Finally, a groundwater grid should enable smart policy; not be based on top-down supposition and estimates or feel like big brother, but share bottom-up facts, netting sensible agreements for stakeholders.

A Groundwater Grid can, as the Smart Grid sometimes does, relieve heavy pressures on a finite resource. Unlike electricity, groundwater renews without massive spending. So groundwater monitoring systems are a worthy, albeit a necessarily carefully planned, investment.

This presentation will explain how useful, democratized water information, at the right price and in the hands of the right stakeholders, is key to sustainable groundwater practices; and when focused on the consumer, will pay large groundwater returns.