Advanced hydraulic analysis for energy assessment in a real water distribution network

Current management issues of water distribution networks deal with energy optimization, water quality, water loss, reliability, rehabilitation, etc., whereas the satisfaction of the users demand and the improvement of service quality remain the main focus of both water utility managers and national legislation. This paper deals with a specific condition of the networks of some regions of Europe (e.g. Italy, Spain, Greece, etc.), where consumers use to have private storage tanks directly connected to the public network and a pumping system feeding taps and facilities in the houses. Network analysis accounting for such devices is challenging for water utilities and a difficult task for many commercial hydraulic simulation software. The paper proposes the advanced hydraulic simulation paradigm of WDNetXL applied to a real case study in Italy.