Demand Collection for Customer Meters

Hello, 

Do you mean that you are looking for total demand at a junction when there is demand on junction as well as on connected customer meter?

As for demand collection of customer meters, currently you need to look at the statistics of customer elements in flex table. And total demand of junction + customer meter can be found it results - "Demand" of junction properties. 

Clarification of your requirement, would be helpful here, so if required we can log an enhancement for this.

So for example I will refer back to your quick start guide.  The guide talks about a junction having demand flows and then adding fire flows to that junction on top of what was there and to make a scenario where the fire flow changed. Also each demand had an associated pattern to it.  However if one uses a customer meter, I only get the option of doing a base demand or use a unit demand.  I do not get to "stack" demands much like i would with a junction.  So what I was looking at doing, as part of my various demand conditions was to able to add demand.  So for example:

Scenario 1 - ADF, No Irrigation 

• Based Demand: .21 gpm, Pattern 24-hour Diurnal Flow Pattern

Scenario 2 - ADF, Irrigation

• Base Demand: .21 gpm, Pattern 24-Hour Diurnal Flow Pattern +
• Irrigation: 12 gpm, Pattern 2-hr flow from 6 am - 8 am

If I continue to use customer meter then I have to calculate it manually for each condition separately as a child scenario and alternative.  

Hello,

Customer meters are meant to represent a single demand. If you need to use a demand collection, it is recommended to use a junction instead, at least in cases where multiple demands for a single node are required. Of course, you could use multiple customer meter elements to represent the different demands and associate them to a single node.

Regards,

Scott

Hello,

Customer meters are meant to represent a single demand. If you need to use a demand collection, it is recommended to use a junction instead, at least in cases where multiple demands for a single node are required. Of course, you could use multiple customer meter elements to represent the different demands and associate them to a single node.

Regards,

Scott

Hi Scott -

I did not realize that junctions can use the lateral feature as I am not concerned about the size of service connection to the structure.  I still will reiterate the enhancement of allowing customer meters to have the ability to have a demand collection associated with it.  I believe that having multiple customer meters at a particular location is tedious to track though might be easy to do active topology.  The symbology (the house symbol) is a nice feature to distinguish between junction and individual connections.  It makes representation of features in the model to accurately disseminate between a demand juntion and a junction for change of flow.  To a non-engineer, they can easily see there are X structures connected to the system.  If you just use junctions to represent structures and change in direction they cannot tell if there are Y structures out of Z junctions.  For me it was a nice check and balance.  I know how many connections I have and by using customer meters and run a flex report I can correlate easily the number of meters versus my customer list and they better match up or I am missing a connection somewhere.  If I did all junctions I would have to subtract out the change of direction junctions from the total and hope that I equal my customer list.  

nkg2, the customer meter element is intended to be used to represent a one-to-one relationship between water users in the real system and demands in the hydraulic model (the "digital twin"). This is why there is only a single demand field for a specific customer meter. For example if there is both a house and and an irrigation demand at a particular location, you would have two customer meter elements, one for the house demand and one for the irrigation demand. Here is a similar discussion on topic.

If you have the per-customer demand information (location and consumption) in external location such as a GIS, you can import all of them at once using ModelBuilder, then assign them to model junctions via LoadBuilder.

Unfortunately I have to rely on regulations to anticipate my flows at a given customer.  Not every customer is the same either.  So customer A may only have domestic flow (brushing, laundry, bathing, etc.) but customer B may have domestic flow plus irrigation associated with it.  So then if you want to keep it as a single demand representation but a person wants to have multiple single demand representations, could we then have a Irrigation Symbol (much like the house customer meter) and then a Fire Symbol to represent fire demand?  Now you can graphically display each demand that is there.  For that matter, why not have a house meter (currently displayed) for just single family and then say a industry icon for industry/commercial demand, a high rise building icon for multifamily structures...now you are graphically representing the type of demand on the hydraulic model? 

nkg2 said:

customer B may have domestic flow plus irrigation associated with it.

If they are metered separately, you should be able to represent them as two separate customer meter elements.

nkg2 said:

So then if you want to keep it as a single demand representation but a person wants to have multiple single demand representations, could we then have a Irrigation Symbol (much like the house customer meter) and then a Fire Symbol to represent fire demand?  Now you can graphically display each demand that is there.

You could use the Pattern, Notes, Zone or UDX field in the customer meter to differentiate the type of customer, then color code on that.

Thanks Jesse.  I re-read and I think I can setup the pattern based on what I want and if I can color code based on pattern then I think that would be very helpful to help quickly and graphically show the difference in connection type.  Would then still like to see the ability to change the icon type for customer meter.  I was just thinking it would be easier to assign and get my listing of demand types per customer asking the request I did.  I, like you, don't want to have clutter on the screen and want to keep it simple and clean but also, we as designers are also story writers and the more you can graphically show what you want to convey the easier it is for the non-engineer to decipher and understand what they are looking at.  Having multiple customer meters shown on top of a house looks cluttered and confuses one from distinguishing between one type of demand vs the other.  Color coding would be an alternative.  I look into that as well.