A Dataset for Research on Water Sustainability

TL;DR

The paper addresses the lack of operational water footprint data for cooling and electricity sectors, hindering optimization of water sustainability. It introduces an hourly Water Efficiency dataset for direct cooling-system water use and indirect water embedded in electricity across 58 US locations from 2019–2023, with weather-aware cooling-tower models and publicly released data and code on OSF. Water Usage Effectiveness is defined as $WUE = WaterConsumption / EnergyProcessed$, with direct forms described by $W_{direct}^{FixedApproach}$ and $W_{direct}^{FixedColdWater}$, depending on the wet-bulb temperature $T_w$, and an indirect WUE term $W_{indirect}(t) = (Sum_k e_k(t) w_k) / (Sum_k e_k(t))$. The release enables practical applications in EV charging, building load management, and data-center load balancing, highlighting meaningful temporal and spatial variation and potential energy-water optimization.

Abstract

Freshwater scarcity is a global problem that requires collective efforts across all industry sectors. Nevertheless, a lack of access to operational water footprint data bars many applications from exploring optimization opportunities hidden within the temporal and spatial variations. To break this barrier into research in water sustainability, we build a dataset for operation direct water usage in the cooling systems and indirect water embedded in electricity generation. Our dataset consists of the hourly water efficiency of major U.S. cities and states from 2019 to 2023. We also offer cooling system models that capture the impact of weather on water efficiency. We present a preliminary analysis of our dataset and discuss three potential applications that can benefit from it. Our dataset is publicly available at Open Science Framework (OSF)

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: US drought map for August 2, 2022, with 4.47% area under exceptional drought (D4), 18.96% area under extreme drought or worse (D3-D4), and 37.03% area under severe drought or worse (D2-D4) usDroughtMap
• Figure 2: Cooling system with evaporative cooling.
• Figure 3: (a) Change in WUE with wet bulb temperatures with different approaches (i.e., the difference between cold water temperature and wet bulb temperature). (b) Model of weather impact on direct WUE. For the "Fixed Approach" model, the approach is set at 5$^{\circ}$F. For the "Fixed Cold Water" temperature model, cold water temperature is set at 85$^{\circ}$F.
• Figure 4: Water efficiency across different U.S. locations in 2023.
• Figure 5: Average WUE across different locations.