Water/Energy Nexus is most intrinsically linked to the core of environmentally sustainable smart cities. Clean and sustainable water supplies and low carbon energy access are the essential infrastructures/building blocks for economies, health and quality of life. It is possible to address the water/energy nexus by utilizing the advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), the distributed monitoring and optimal utilization and control of renewable energy resources - such as wind, solar and energy storage - along with technological advancements in wastewater treatment, solid waste management, district cooling system, etc. Developing distributed renewable energy generation and storage is the major interventions beside the energy efficiency and demand electrification. The pervasive deployment of the advanced ICT, especially the smart metering, will generate big energy data in terms of volume, velocity, and variety. This can bring huge benefits to energy efficiency and management; however, it must be processed and communicated in an energy efficient manner.

ECOWET (Efficient Coupling Of Water and Energy Technologies for Smart Sustainable Cities) is an Indo-German research project for development of an energy management system for efficient management of electricity and water infrastructures in the smart sustainable cities. The project involves development of hardware and software platforms to improve energy efficiency and water management, integration of on-site distributed clean energy resources and energy storage devices for better network efficiency and reduced carbon footprint. 

The project is jointly funded by IGSTC (Indo-German Science and technology center), DLR (German Space Agency) and industrial partners. The consortium is formed as R&D+I, with fortiss GmbH, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur as institutional/academic partners and, GIFT city and Sonnen GmbH as Industrial Partners. The project runs from February 2018 to January 2021.