Economic assessment of converting a pressurised water distribution network into an off-grid system supplied with solar photovoltaic energy

Houssem Eddine Chabour,Miguel Angel Pardo,Adrian Riquelme

doi:10.1007/s10098-022-02290-5

Houssem Eddine Chabour, Miguel Angel Pardo + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-022-02290-5

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Abstract

Converting a water pressurised distribution network into an off-grid pumping station supplied by solar photovoltaics represents a challenge for utility managers, user demand assessments evaluate the energy generated in a solar-powered systems to establish energy consumption. This work includes quantifying potential investments and economic savings that could be achieved, as well as the payback period which results as an indicator of the suitability of adapting to a power supply utilising solar panels. A tool (UAsolar) to aid practitioners has been developed, it requires a calibrated hydraulic model to account for the energy requirements in the water delivery process of pressurised networks. The authors encourage students, professionals, and decision-makers to use this tool to identify potential efficiency gains (e.g., delivery schedule, reduction of water use) and to synchronise energy production and consumption. Users can get results with low computational time using the software on six pressurised distribution networks. Practitioners should note that the irrigation networks have sized installations with a few photovoltaic modules, while in urban pressurised networks the results show larger installations are required. In addition, irrigation network managers can match energy demand with energy production by changing consumption over time, this could reduce the quantity of modules required and remove the need for energy storage. The payback period ranges from 6.08 to 13 years for the cases where the investment is recovered—(values that show that this investment yields a high return as the lifetime of the PV modules is 25 years). However, one municipality among those studied shows that in some scenarios it is not viable to convert networks into a standalone system.Graphical abstract

Highlights

Water management is an energy-intensive procedure with 4% of overall global electricity consumption (IEA 2019)
These are separated into energy consumption, energy production and economic results
The software presents graphical results as a plot showing energy produced and consumed (Online Appendix A). Users may store this graph in many image formats.The raw data achieved is exported by UASolar software using a report file called “Name. inp— report.txt”

Summary

Introduction

Water management is an energy-intensive procedure with 4% of overall global electricity consumption (IEA 2019). Researchers evaluated the energy footprint in the urban water cycle among the 0.21–4.07 kWh/m3 (Wakeel and Chen 2016), amounts which rested on circumstances, such as the topography, water source, climate, treatment technology. Drinking water and wastewater plants account for 30–40 per cent of total energy consumed in some municipalities and this consumption account for 3–4 per cent of total nationwide (U.S.) electricity use (Gude 2015). Since water distribution is a high energy-consuming process, renewable energy sources gained enormous interest among experts and the public for reducing the reliance on carbon-intensive energy production, minimizing global warming and fossil fuel depletion. The massive use of silicon solar panels has even led to the potential shortage of material in the decade (Heidari and Anctil 2021)

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