Renewable Energy Production from Water Distribution Systems

摘要

Water distribution systems are designed to satisfy the consumer demands at the outlet nodes. To achieve this goal, adequate pressures need to be maintained throughout the network. As the complexity of a water distribution network increases, maintaining target pressures becomes difficult. This yields excess pressures at several locations of the network. The conventional solution to this problem is to install pressure reducing valves which adjust the local head loss to lower the downstream pressure. This approach dissipates significant amount of energy that can be recovered and used for the benefit of the community. This energy recovery is possible by the utilization of micro hydroelectric turbines as an alternative means of pressure reduction. In this study, an optimization approach for the design of energy recovery systems in water distribution networks is proposed. This methodology is based on finding the best locations for micro hydroelectric plants in the network to recover the excess energy. Due to the unsteady nature of flow in water distribution networks, the proposed methodology also determines an optimum operation schedule for the micro turbines. The objective of the optimization algorithm is determined as the net annual energy gained by the energy recovery system. As a test case, the proposed methodology is applied to the water distribution system serving the Dover Township area in New Jersey, which can be considered to be a typical small town in USA. The results show that this study is an effective tool for the assessment of renewable energy potential in water distribution systems.