Optimal Pump Station Operation Based on the Single Variable-Frequency Speed Regulation

Abstract

Aiming at the situations that pumps of the same model are used in most pump stations and the price of frequency converter is too high, the reasons are analyzed for the low efficiency of pump assembly operating under the single frequency converter configuration condition. In multipled pump assembly equipped with pumps of the same model, adding an extra pump operating as a transitional pump whose maximum flow rate is half of the previous ones’ will reduce variable-speed pump’s speed regulation ratio. According to this, a model for optimising operation of pump station is constructed with the minimum shaft power being objective function and solved by simulated annealing genetic algorithm. And then a comparison analysis about energy consumption and economical efficiency is made toward these three speed regulation strategies. Energy consumption analysis results indicate that single speed regulation with transitional pump consumes a little more energy than that of all speed regulation, while economical efficiency analysis results show that it cost only one twelfth of all-speed-regulation in extra investment and its payback period is one eighth of the latter’s. The effect of energy saving of this strategy of speed regulation is obvious and solves well the problem that pump station equipped with the same model of pump operates at low efficiency when equipped with a single frequency converter.