LEAKAGE REDUCTION AND SECURITY ENHANCEMENT FOR WATER DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS BY ONLINE PRESSURE CONTROL

This paper presents a method for operational leakage reduction and sec urity enhancement of water distribution networks using optimised on-li ne control of pressure reducing valves and variable speed pumps. An ea rlier algorithm which uses valve control only has been extended to sol ve the combined problem of controlling valves and variable speed pumps , and furthermore, new hydraulic constraints have been added. The prob lem is formulated as an optimisation of the system pressure profile su bject to the network hydraulic balance and system operational constrai nts. A solution technique based on successive linear programming is de scribed. Sparsity techniques are employed to achieve computational eff iciency. The effectiveness of the pressure control scheme is illustrat ed using an example network.