Leveraging Asset Management Data for Energy Recovery and Leakage Reduction

Abstract

Excess pressure and increases in pressure within water supply and distribution systems correlate directly to increased water losses from pipe leakages. Pressure management in water supply and distribution systems, is one of the most influential, most important and most cost-effective interventions that can be implemented in order to reduce leakage. Excess pressure available in water supply and distribution systems can be used as a renewable, low cost clean energy alternative for energy production with no significant environmental impacts. Similar to the use of PRVs, hydraulic turbines and pumps as turbines can be used to reduce excess pressure in a water network, but with the added benefit of converting the excess pressure into electric power rather than to dissipate the energy. Asset management systems, inclusive of asset management plans and asset registers, provides unabridged information on water supply and distribution systems with regards to spatial, technical, operational and financial data. Analysis of this data with respect to energy recovery highlights the currently undetected opportunities. The energy consumption in urban water supply and distribution systems represents 7% of the world’s energy consumption. The paper investigates and proposes the leveraging of asset management data for optimizing pressure management to enable maximum energy recovery and reduce the leakage rate from the system. Energy recovery decreases the carbon foot-print of the water distribution system while simultaneously either generating a stream of revenue for the operator or resulting in an energy cost saving. This increase in revenue or cost saving impacts on the dynamic of an asset management plan and provides for a more sustainable system. The paper also investigates the asset life cycle implications of energy recovery on the asset management system as well as the addition of an energy recovery and leakage reduction layer to current asset management software.