Pressure Management of Water Distribution Systems via the Remote Real-Time Control of Variable Speed Pumps

Low and constant pressure can be maintained throughout a water distribution system by setting the pressure at remote consumer locations and using the pressure to control the speed of a variable speed pump (VSP). The prospect of incorporating hydraulics theory into a controller is investigated, with the goal of improving on generic controllers. Five new controllers are proposed here, four of which depend on hydraulics theory. These controllers, which set the speed of the VSP, are investigated numerically. A parameter-dependent controller that does not require the flow in the pump to be known is developed and shown to significantly improve on the performance of conventional (parameter-dependent) proportional control (PC). Next, a parameter-free controller that requires the flow in the pump to be known is proposed and shown to outperform PC, even though PC has a tunable parameter, and perform comparably to the best new parameter-dependent controllers. The parameter-dependent controllers (when optimally tuned) perform best overall. The efficacy of many of the new controllers shows that hydraulics theory can lead to improved controllers. (C) 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.