Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, May 26, 2022 – Pani Energy, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that provides digital twin technology to the water management sector, announces the beginning of a pilot project with Orange County Water District (OCWD). The two organizations will be working together on an implementation of Pani Genius™ at OCWD’s Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS), the world’s largest water purification system for potable reuse.
After developing the test plan, training from historical & design data from the facility, operators at GWRS will use the Pani platform in their daily workflows at designated reverse osmosis (RO) units at the plant. The platform’s artificial intelligence (AI) will use historical and live data coming from the facility’s RO trains to discover opportunities for optimization. These opportunities can provide operational risk mitigation and financial value for the facility. Benefits include process improvements, predictive maintenance recommendations, and increased system reliability, delivering higher production rates using less energy to enable a more resilient operational team and infrastructure that provides greater access to affordable water. Results from the pilot project are expected by mid-2023.
“We are excited to work with OCWD, they will now have access to a hybrid AI solution that utilizes state of the art machine learning techniques and proprietary first-principle chemical engineering models. Pani’s AI will help reduce operating risk, energy and chemical consumption, greenhouse gas emissions while helping operators and engineers better utilize their time through automated analysis. We are on a mission to transform how we think about water treatment and working with innovative utilities like OCWD to drive modernization. This pilot project will provide a key case-study and reference point for utilities across the globe looking to lower costs, risks, and carbon emissions through their digital journey.” -Devesh Bharadwaj, CEO of Pani
Two-thirds of California's population lives in southern California where less than one-third of the state’s precipitation falls. While other southern California counties rely mostly on imported water supplies to meet their water needs, north and central Orange County does not. The majority of its water supply is derived from the large groundwater basin managed by OCWD.
The GWRS is fairly unique as it takes highly treated wastewater that would have otherwise been discharged into the Pacific Ocean and purifies it using a three-step advanced treatment process. The resulting high-quality water meets or exceeds all state and federal drinking water standards and is then used to replenish the groundwater basin.
“Working with Pani Energy is an important opportunity for us to get first-hand experience with a real-world application of AI. Digital twins, advanced analytics, and machine learning are getting a lot of buzz and we’d like to do a systematic trial to better understand what this can do for our day-to-day plant operations.” -Megan Plumlee, Ph.D., P.E., OCWD Research Director
About Pani Energy
Canadian company Pani Energy provides a cloud-based machine learning software platform to elevate the efficiency of industrial and city scale desalination and wastewater treatment plants.
Pani's award-winning Digital Operator Coach™ aggregates and ingests data from the plant, then analyzes, visualizes, and instructs operators how to optimize their plant's performance, saving time, resources, and the environment.
About OCWD
Orange County Water District (OCWD) is an internationally recognized leader in the water industry, providing water supply to more than 2.5 million people in Orange County, California, USA. OCWD has been in operation since 1933 to guard, manage, and replenish the region’s groundwater basin to ensure water reliability and quality. The Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS) purifies treated wastewater into drinking water and is the largest facility of its kind in the world, with a capacity of 100 million gallons per day (MGD) or 379 million liters per day (MLD).
Media Contacts
Norvin Eitzen
Marketing, Pani Energy
tel: +1 (905) 687-2615
email: norvineitzen@panienergy.com
Gina Ayala
Director of Public Affairs Orange County Water District
18700 Ward Street, Fountain Valley, CA 92708
tel: (714) 378-3323
fax: (714) 378-3373
email: gayala@ocwd.com
