Operational Costs Optimization in Water Distribution Systems

Pump management and reservoir management have many similarities, and therefore, should ideally be analyzed in an integrated way to plan effectively the daily operation of water distribution systems. Historically, these two management activities have been evolved as separate tasks in energy-efficiency (i.e., energy optimization) studies and are often carried out in an isolated way. The latter being most often associated directly with the concepts of multimodal and multi-objective optimization problems, whereas the former is usually considered as a single optimization problem to be solved. When some single optimization problems appear at part of the solution tied to a local (i.e., regional) search-space (i.e., objective space), this artificial integration (i.e., multi-modal and multi-objective optimization) can always obtain optimal solutions. Similarly when system constraints and load conditions are considered, a set of feasible and innovative optimal solutions can be obtained in order to continue the enhancement of energy consumption that turns into a significant reduction in the overall operational cost (i.e., a potential of 6.24% cost savings) without affecting the level of services provided to the clients in a safe and protected manner.