Just When You Thought You Had Seen It All—The Value of High Frequency Pressure Data

After experiencing multiple pipe breaks in a single area, the staff at The Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD) began to suspect that pressure transient events were to blame. Though the District has one of the most sophisticated SCADA systems in the country, there was no direct evidence of significant transient events. The data provided by the traditional pressure monitoring equipment could not validate their suspicions. With the aim of getting more detailed pressure data, the District deployed a series of high sample rate pressure monitoring devices. Almost immediately the highly granular data not only confirmed their suspicion that transients were wreaking havoc, but revealed pressures nearly twice as high as what they had been capturing with their traditional data monitoring system. This case study reviews how LVVWD utilized the high sample rate pressure data to calm their systems and eliminate the source of damaging transients.