Solano Irrigation District Puts Remote Technology to Work in Saving Water by ACWA Staff Aug 10, 2021 California’s agricultural community has a long history of matching innovation with technology to save every possible drop of water. Continuous investments in water use efficiency technologies have helped increase production, while at the same time demand for agricultural water has declined. Advances in technology, such as remote sensors and satellite imaging, allow farmers to monitor soil moisture and only use water where and when it’s needed. Working in collaboration with growers, irrigation districts contribute to this continual push for innovation on many levels. One of numerous examples includes the Solano Irrigation District (SID), which maintains about 370 miles of pipes, canals, and ditches. The canals deliver water to agricultural lands covering 45,000 acres in any one year with SID relying on an allocation of usually 140,000 acre-feet. Manual control of irrigation canals gets water where growers need it; however, the time and accuracy required to control water flow with manual weirs, and the opening and closing of delivery gates, comes with an unavoidable lack of precision. Managing flow rates and accounting for the impacts of outfalls, leakage, evaporation and weather conditions add more variables. Beginning 10 years ago, SID explored the use of automated gates and weirs operated autonomously through the use of telemetry as a canal management tool through its work with the Australian firm Rubicon. Since then, SID has installed automated devices on various facilities throughout the District. As an example, SID automated 29,000 feet of its Vaughn Canal a few years back. The system has eight mini-reservoirs (pools) created by automated gates. Each pool delivers water to a dozen or so customers at different locations along its length. A real-time mathematical model controls the water going into the system and at each reservoir gate using telemetry feedback and customer water demand. Since SID is moving slugs of hundreds of acre feet of water down its canal system, automation has greatly helped in meeting changing customer demand and increasing efficiency. Information relayed to SID offices is monitored much the same as through a SCADA system for pressurized water treatment operations. The big difference is in a pressurized water system, the SCADA systems are set to maintain a certain pressure to meet customer demand. In an agricultural canal system, the SCADA systems need to add in a real-time mathematical model to keep up with customer demand. In SID’s case, Rubicon developed the automated equipment and computer model technology that SID is implementing. The system also requires a different level of expertise. SID has added two SCADA technicians and one electrician to its staff, but that cost and the investment into the capital behind the technology is paying off. SID is still in the process of expanding use of its remote canal control system, having invested $5 million to date and many millions planned for the next 15 years. However, that investment is paying off. SID estimates that the technology will save up to 10% of the water it normally uses, or up to about 10,000 acre feet a year, according to SID General Manager Cary Keaten. “We’re very happy with it,” Keaten said. “We need to employ every edge we have available to us in conserving every drop of water we can, especially now. This technology gives us one more tool among many in fulfilling that mission while serving the customers who grow our food.”
