ENERGY PRODUCTION BY WATER DISTRIBUTION NETWORK

Water Demand Management (WDM), try to emphasize on water network demand so that it can improve water distribution efficiency by application of different strategies such as Leakage control and pressure management. Pressure Reducing Valves (PRV) are often used in water network to reduce the downstream hydraulic losses in the network; therefore location of PRVs must be adequately selected so that they have maximum efficiency. PRVs is useful for reduceing excess pressure and prevention of leakage by spreading energy, but this excess pressure can be used to produce energy. Mini-Hydropower or pump as turbines (PATs) can be used for converting excess pressure to electric power. In the present paper PRVs and PATs were used within an area of Ahar water distribution network,Iran, by analyzing different scenarios, it is tried to show large potential of PATs for energy production and also explain how PATs can be competitive for generating hydropower from excess pressure in water distribution systems..

Keywords:

water distribution network , Pressure reducing valves , pump as turbines , network pressure