Energy and leakage management

Nowadays, due to high energy prices and the policy of governments and regulatory bodies forcing water companies to reduce their carbon footprint and water losses, our current work on ‘clean water’ is focused mainly on modelling, identification and optimisation techniques applied to water networks with the aim to minimise the leakage and the energy used for water treatment and pumping. During recent years WSS developed novel water distribution systems optimisation methods, which have been applied in numerous case studies; the major studies carried out during the last 4 years are as follows:

1. Grafham, Anglian Water: network consisting of 4268 nodes, 4400 pipes, 19 reservoirs, 49 pumps in 34 pumping stations, with an average demand of 600 l/s
2. Oldham, United Utilities: network consisting of 3537 nodes, 3258 pipes, 17 reservoirs, 19 pumps in 11 pumping stations, with an average demand of 800 l/s
3. South Harrogate, Yorkshire Water Services: network consisting of 2074 nodes, 2212 pipes, 6 reservoirs, 8 pumps in 5 pumping stations, with an average demand of 400 l/s

In the above studies the predicted savings (obtained from simulations using models provided by the water companies) depended on particular scenario, enforced operational constraints etc. Typical savings are: (i) reduction of leakage up to 9%, (ii) reduction of cost of energy used for water treatment and pumping between 10% and 20%. In case of project #3 our optimisation software has been integrated with a SCADA system from ABB, which monitors in real-time the operation of the South Harrogate network and displays suggested control actions to a human operator.