Investigating trade-offs between the operating cost and green house gas emissions from water distribution systems

Ruben Menke, K Kadehjian, Edo Abraham, Ivan Stoianov

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)
45 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

For electricity grids with an increasing share of intermittent renewables, the power generation mix can have significant daily variations. This leads to time-dependent emission intensities and volatile electricity prices in the day-ahead and spot market tariffs that can be better utilised by energy intensive industries such as water supply utilities. A multi-objective optimisation method for scheduling the operation of pumps is investigated in this paper for the reduction of both electricity costs and greenhouse gas emissions for a benchmark water distribution system. A set of energy supply scenarios has been formulated based on future projections from National Grid plc (UK) in order to investigate the range of cost savings and emission reductions that could be possibly achieved. Pump scheduling options with fixed time-of-use and day ahead market tariffs are analysed in order to compare potential reduction tradeoffs for both electricity costs and greenhouse gas emissions using Pareto optimality. The presented analysis concludes that the explicit inclusion of greenhouse gas emission reductions in optimising the scheduling of pumps operation in water distribution systems could provide considerable benefits; however, more compelling fiscal and regulatory incentives are needed.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)13-22
JournalSustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments
Volume21
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Keywords

  • Multi-objective optimisation
  • Water distribution systems
  • Pump scheduling

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Investigating trade-offs between the operating cost and green house gas emissions from water distribution systems'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this