An energy-efficient control approach for multi-pump water pumping stations

The importance of the optimization in the water pumping system is represented in supplying demand in a given time period and reduces the operation cost of the pumping system. This study has proposed a method for solving a complex multi-level pumping system by dividing them into subsystems and optimize each subsystem separately in order to optimize the whole pumping system. Taking into account the Time-of-Use (TOU) electricity tariff and water demand, each subsystem has been optimized using a simplified dynamic programming algorithm (SDPA) separately starting from the last level to the first level. The water supply system in Sakarya city in Turkey was investigated as a case study. The simulation results show that the proposed method can significantly succeed in reducing energy cost by shift the load of the peak time period to the off-peak or the standard time period, which reduced the cost by approximately 40%, 42%, for two pumps in the second level and 21% for the pump in the first level compared with conventional water level control.