"a very informative as well as enjoyable day"
The MISER user group meeting was held at the Euston Plaza Hotel, London and was attended by most of the current licence holders plus a number considering joining the MISER community. Attendees included representatives from: Anglian, Bristol, Ofwat, South East, South West, Southern, Thames, United Utilities and Wessex. The feed-back on the day was pleasing, including comments such as that above.
Following a presentation by Marcus Fowler of Tynemarch of the current functionality and applications of the strategic optimisation software MISER-S, presentations were given by Kevin Woodward of United Utilities and Paul McMahon of Southern Water Services.
Kevin Woodward described the use of MISER within UU to plan, manage and assess the impact of AMP3 outages on the supply/demand balance, operating costs and water quality (using the Source Tracker extension). Their Regional supply system model comprises more than 500 nodes and has identified local demand issues not apparent in a high level analysis. Kevin concluded (without coercion!) that MISER is an "excellent tool for resource and supply system planning, invaluable in assessing AMP3 outages and water quality issues".
Paul McMahon gave an overview of the planned SWS Water Production Management System in which MISER is the central component, generating daily/weekly pump schedules, deriving quarterly and annual operating plans, and carrying out long-term strategic analysis. SWS have already been using MISER since 1998 for strategic studies. Paul listed some of the benefits of using MISER including better control of costs representing multiple criteria, improved drought management, increased inter-zonal linkage and minimisation of the risks of breaching Regulatory targets.
Stephen Cook of Tynemarch described the pump scheduling version of MISER which, although a recent development, is already in use by one client to achieve energy cost savings. MISER-PS produces pump schedules describing the optimal settings of all pump and valve operations to a 30 minute resolution. It uses the same basic model as the strategic model in MISER-S and can be used to plan day-to-day system operation, identify emergency responses to failures and compare tariffs. On-line installations of previous Tynemarch pump scheduling systems have generated electricity savings of 8-10% per year.
There was considerable interest in the latest MISER development - the inclusion of risk analysis functionality incorporating Monte Carlo Simulation. MISER-Risk builds on our experience in quantitative risk analysis for the prioritisation of capital investment and the assessment of headroom previously provided as a consultancy service. MISER-Risk will enable users to undertake similar analyses themselves and will be available early next year.
A wide variety of other planned MISER developments were presented to the Group for discussion, ranging from additional drawing tools, favourite graphs, shut-down state, additional cost types and licence contingency to age of water analysis, sensitivity analysis, multiple levels of model detail and on-line telemetry links. The degree of interest for each main enhancement was assessed and our development plans will be modified to reflect user priorities.
Overall it was a very successful day: there was much participation and exchange of views by the attendees; the talks by current users and of new functionality generated much discussion; and plans for the future were well-received. We are already planning the next meeting!
For enquiries about MISER or other products and services please do not hesitate to contact us.