Electrical Energy Consumption Forecasting to Improve Energy Efficiency of Water Distribution Systems

Abstract

The energy management problem is essential in optimal planning and operation of water distribution systems. This problem involves establishing the operation schedule for all water hydrophore stations from the system. One of the available policies for improving energy efficiency is related to the decrease of electricity consumption. This supposes two important aspects: the upgrading of the water distribution system and use of software packages order to ease the decision making process. Two approaches based on clustering and decision trees are proposed for electrical energy consumption forecasting in the water distribution systems. The comparative studies were realized using a database of 85 urban water hydrophore stations belonging to a Romanian water distribution company. Based on these results, it can be considered that the new proposed approaches have the ability to constitute an IT infrastructure which can be actively used for improving energy efficiency in water distribution systems.