Hydropower Potential in Water Distribution Networks: Pressure Control by PATs

Oreste Fecarotta (), Costanza Aricò (), Armando Carravetta (), Riccardo Martino () and Helena Ramos ()

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2015, vol. 29, issue 3, 699-714

Abstract: Pressure control is one of the main techniques to control leakages in Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) and to prevent pipe damage, improving the delivery standards of a water supply systems. Pressure reducing stations (PRSs) equipped by either pressure reducing valves or motor driven regulating valves are commonly used to dissipate excess hydraulic head in WDNs. An integrated new technical solution with economic and system flexibility benefits is presented which replaces PRSs with pumps used as turbines (PATs). Optimal PAT performance is obtained by a Variable Operating Strategy (VOS), recently developed for the design of small hydropower plants on the basis of valve time operation, and net return determined by both energy production and savings through minimizing leakage. The literature values of both leakages costs and energy tariffs are used to develop a buisness plan model and evaluate the economic benefit of small hydropower plants equipped with PATs. The study shows that the hydropower installation produces interesting economic benefits, even in presence of small available power, that could encourage the leakage reduction even if water savings are not economically relevant, with consequent environmental benefits. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Variable operating strategy (VOS); Water distribution networks; Energy recovery; PATs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-014-0836-3 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:29:y:2015:i:3:p:699-714

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-014-0836-3

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().