The Water-Energy Nexus: A Synergistic Approach to Utility Infrastructure

Course Description

Have you ever received a “Boil Water” notice from the water company because there was a power outage at the water treatment facility? This outage may have caused a pressure drop in the water system allowing contaminants to enter your drinking water. What about rolling blackouts during a summer heat wave when power demand is high? Power plants may need to shut off parts of the power grid to reduce the overall load on the system. Maybe this power plant is experiencing insufficient generation capacity because the water in the reservoir used to effectively run their turbines is too low.

This course delves into the inextricable link between our water and energy systems – water depends on energy for production, treatment, and distribution; and energy depends on water for producing energy from electricity generation to nuclear power to fossil fuel extraction. You will learn about the basic principles of the water-energy nexus, how to apply these principles to your engineering projects, emerging technologies which leverage this nexus, and challenges and opportunities which may affect future growth in this area.

Climate change, scarce resources, limited budgets, and regulatory concerns are pushing engineers to think out of the box and develop solutions that are solve not one but two or three problems at a time. This course gives you tools to come with new ideas and apply innovation solutions to everyday issues which have the potential for providing beneficial effects on our resources.

Learning Objectives

1. Identify and apply the core principles of the water-energy nexus for synergistic and resilient infrastructure integration and operation.

2. Evaluate the steps required to plan, develop, and implement engineering solutions which embody water-energy nexus concepts.

3. Analyze emerging technologies which embrace the water-energy nexus in their design, function, and optimization to inform future innovation.

4. Present water-energy nexus challenges and opportunities in the regulatory and environmental context to in order to recognize new concepts and solutions for resolving roadblocks to adoption.