High-Efficiency Predictive Control of Pumping

A novel method is offered to control centrifugal pumping stations with variable speed drives and programmable logical controllers. Using pre-defined tabularized data, efficiency estimates are applied for different number of pumps operated at various speeds. The control strategy is proposed basing on both the analytical performance characteristics and the experimental efficiency distribution diagrams of pumps. An efficiency map has been designed in which the optimal number of pumps is recorded targeting to maintain the system performance in the best efficiency regions. Experimental results validate the new control approach.