Reducing Background Leakages and Energy Consumption in a Real WDN by Optimal DMA Design

Closing gate valves at the boundaries of District Metering Areas (DMAs) in Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) allows reducing pressure and leakages through the WDN, as a consequence of changing the hydraulic paths of the system. A two-step strategy was recently proposed for accomplishing such a task. The first step is the optimal segmentation design, based on maximizing the WDN-oriented modularity index, using the minimum number of “conceptual cuts” (i.e. not accounting for devices). The second step returns the conceptual cuts where gate valves should be closed by solving a three-objective optimization that simultaneously minimizes (i) the total unsupplied customer demand, (ii) the background leakages and (iii) the number of flow meters (i.e. open conceptual cuts). This contribution demonstrates the application of the methodology on a real Romanian WDN discussing the savings in energy consumption due to background leakage reduction in various DMA design scenarios.