Optimal pump scheduling with pressure control aspects: case studies

In this paper a method for combined energy and pressure management via integration of pump scheduling with pressure control aspects is described and applied to a medium scale water supply network. The method is based on formulating and solving an optimisation problem and involves utilisation of an hydraulic model of the network with pressure dependent leakage and inclusion of a PRV model with the PRV set-points included in a set of decision variables. Such problem formulation led to the optimizer attempting to reduce both energy usage and leakage. Case study considered revealed potential for substantial saving in electrical energy cost using the proposed method. This research is sponsored by and is a part of EPSRC Neptune project www.neptune.ac.uk). The authors are grateful to Ridwan Patel of Yorkshire Water Services for providing the data used in this paper.