It’s easy to assume the hottest days top the demand rankings. But weather alone doesn’t tell the whole story, and no two zones are the same.
Mining each zone’s SCADA and weather data shows that top-ranked demand events line up with different local triggers, such as:
sustained heat or dry spells, driving outdoor and garden water use
weekend and public holiday patterns, when more people are home
concentrated hydrant extraction, from construction, dam filling or flushing
Some high demand days carry no weather signal at all, pointing to commercial or other local factors.
The video below shows example zones in a single network, and their top-ranked demand days and weeks, with the driver behind each event.
For planners, this matters when a development or capital project lands on a zone.
Knowing what drives its peak, rather than assuming heat, lets them size and invest against the real risk.
For operators, it sharpens the call in real time. When a day is shaping up to be a big one, knowing a zone’s history, for example that hydrant extraction has driven past peaks there, helps them read the event as it unfolds.
A short, silent video walkthrough of 14 example zones in a single network, showing the top-ranked maximum day and maximum week demand events and the driver behind each one. Daily peaks spread across weather, calendar and hydrant triggers, while weekly peaks lean toward sustained heat as the longer window smooths out local, one-off anomalies.