Water Resour Manage (2015) 29:699–714

DOI 10.1007/s11269-014-0836-3

Hydropower Potential in Water Distribution Networks:

Pressure Control by PATs

Oreste Fecarotta · Costanza Aricò · Armando

Carravetta · Riccardo Martino · Helena M. Ramos

Received: 15 November 2013 / Accepted: 13 October 2014 /

Published online: 4 November 2014
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract Pressure control is one of the main techniques to control leakages in Water Dis-
tribution Networks (WDNs) and to prevent pipe damage, improving the delivery standards
of a water supply systems. Pressure reducing stations (PRSs) equipped by either pressure
reducing valves or motor driven regulating valves are commonly used to dissipate excess
hydraulic head in WDNs. An integrated new technical solution with economic and system
flexibility benefits is presented which replaces PRSs with pumps used as turbines (PATs).
Optimal PAT performance is obtained by a Variable Operating Strategy (VOS), recently
developed for the design of small hydropower plants on the basis of valve time operation,
and net return determined by both energy production and savings through minimizing leak-
age. The literature values of both leakages costs and energy tariffs are used to develop a
buisness plan model and evaluate the economic benefit of small hydropower plants equipped
with PATs. The study shows that the hydropower installation produces interesting economic
benefits, even in presence of small available power, that could encourage the leakage reduc-
tion even if water savings are not economically relevant, with consequent environmental
benefits.

O. Fecarotta () · A. Carravetta · R. Martino

Department of Civil, Architechtural and Environmental Engineering, Università di Napoli Federico II,
via Claudio, 21, 80125 Napoli, Italy
e-mail: oreste.fecarotta@unina.it
A. Carravetta
e-mail: arcarrav@unina.it
R. Martino
e-mail: rmartino@unina.it

C. Aricò
Department of Civil, Environmental and Aerospace Engineering, Università di Palermo, Viale delle
Scienze, 90128 Palermo, Italy
e-mail: costanza.arico@unipa.it

H.M. Ramos
Department of Civil Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, Avenida
Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-01 Lisboa, Portugal
e-mail: hramos.ist@gmail.com
700 O. Fecarotta et al.

Keywords Variable operating strategy (VOS) · Water distribution networks ·

Energy recovery · PATs

Acronyms
BEP Best Efficiency Point;
HR Hydraulic Regulation;
NPV Net Present Value.
PAT Pump As Turbine;
PRS Pressure Reducing Stations;
VOS Variable Operating Strategy;
WDN Water Distribution Network;

1 Introduction

Water leakages in urban networks are due to several causes, such as pipe breakages or joint
failures, and the amount of lost water by leakages is strictly related to the pressure value
(Almandoz et al. 2005). Leakage minimization is an important issue in water distribution
network (WDN) management (Christodoulou et al. 2013), because it can yields important
money savings due to the reduction of water losses (Mutikanga et al. 2013; Gomes et al.
2013). with a consequent improving of delivering standards (Carravetta and Giugni 2009)
and performance indicators and protecting roads and buildings from underground cavities
(Carravetta et al. 2009).
In existing networks pressure reduction can be achieved by inserting pressure reducing
stations (PRSs) equipped by either pressure reducing valves or regulating valves to dissi-
pate excess hydraulic head (Tucciarelli et al. 1999; Walski et al. 2006; Prescott and Ulanicki
2008). The satisfaction of water demand, i.e. a target distribution of pressure in WDN nodes,
is the main design constraint of the numerical model proposed in literature for PRSs place-
ment (Van Zyl et al. 2004; Vairavamoorthy and Lumbers 1998; Liberatore and Sechi 2009).
Among the others, Araujo et al. (2006) proposed a two steps procedure for the optimal loca-
tion of valves and their best operational time control. The procedure was applied to Jowitt
and Xu (1990) network and the solutions demonstrated that a great saving of water volumes
could be obtained by inserting a few PRSs in strategic nodes.
Nevertheless, the head drop in any PRS is a dissipation of energy which should be con-
verted to electric energy (Carravetta et al. 2013b; Filion et al. 2004; Sammartano et al.
2013). Hydropower is considered a proven reliable energy resource (Lin et al. 2013; Li et al.
2013; Fathi-Moghadam et al. 2013) and is proposed herein to recover energy within WDNs.
A technical solution, combining both economic benefits and system flexibility for smaller
implementations, is the installation of pumps used as turbines (PATs) (Zakkour et al. 2002)
within the PRSs.
Currently, to the authors’ knowledge, there is no study about an integrated approach
aimed to the evaluation of the economical benefit of valves replacement by PATs in water
distribution networks. The study is performed with reference to the solutions of Araujo
et al. (2006) and the optimal PATs design is obtained by a recently developed procedure,
namely VOS (Carravetta et al. 2012; 2013a), on the basis of valve time operations. Then, a
buisness plan model for the design of the hydropower plant is presented and the net return
determined by both energy production and water savings are compared with hydropower
system installation costs. The study is aimed to the evaluation of the hydropower investment
Hydropower Potential in WDNs: Pressure Control by PATs 701

in several countries of the world and the values of both leakages costs and green or feed-in
energy tariffs of the different have been investigated. The convenience of the investment,
even in presence of small installed power and variable hydraulic characteristics is finally
demonstrated.

2 Hydropower Potentiality for Pressure Control

The complete rehabilitation of the network, with the replacement of oversized and corrupted
branches (Vasan and Simonovic 2010) is very expensive and in most cases can be avoided
if an effective control of the head patterns in water distribution networks (Campisano et al.
2012) is performed.
Installing an equivalent small hydropower plant using a PAT as a production device as
an alternative to a conventional regulating valve offers new opportunity for pressure control
(Carravetta et al. 2012) and can be economically convenient. Another advantage of this
technology is in the increase of the flexibility of the network, because its performances can
be enhanced in case of pipe failure, by changing the PAT working conditions.
A correct PAT design strategy involves knowledge of flow and head patterns in the instal-
lation to allow evaluation of the best performing PAT. Among all the feasible installation
schemes (Carravetta et al. 2014a), the hydraulic regulation (HR) mode has been chosen for
this study. In such situation the plant is composed of two branches: the first branch is a dis-
sipation/production branch where the PAT and a valve are placed in series, while the second
branch is a by pass regulated by another valve (Fig. 1).
Figure 2 shows the system operation: PAT characteristic curve and hypothetical work-
ing conditions in a production-dissipation node are reported. Qi is the demand flow and
Hi is the head drop requested for the desired regulation of the network. For a requested
head drop, Hi , higher than the head-drop deliverable by the machine, H T (points above the
PAT characteristic curve), the series valve dissipates the excess pressure. Instead, when the
discharge, Qi , is larger (points to the below the PAT characteristic curve), the PAT would
produce a head-drop higher than the available head: therefore, the bypass valve is opened to
reduce the discharge flowing into the PAT from Qi to QTi . If a set of characteristic curves
is available (Carravetta et al. 2014b), the design PAT is the one which yields the best plant
efficiency, which is defined as follows:

n
H T QTi ηiT ti
n i
ηp = i=1 with QTi ≤ Qi and HiT ≤ Hi (1)
i=1 Hi Qi ti

Fig. 1 Installation scheme of a PAT with hydraulic regulation, as proposed by Carravetta et al. (2012)
702 O. Fecarotta et al.

Fig. 2 PAT operating conditions

in hydraulic regulation mode, as
proposed by Carravetta et al.
(2012)

being ti the duration of the i-th time interval with constant hydraulic characteristics
(Qi , Hi ) and (QTi , HiT ) the hydraulic characteristics delivered by the machine with ηiT
mechanical efficiency.
The plant efficiency, ηp , is a synthetic value which describe the amount of available
hydraulic energy that can converted into electric energy.
It is important to stress that the plant efficiency is different from the best mechanical
efficiency: the latter is relative to the best working performances of the machine in a specific
hydraulic condition, while the former corresponds to the whole response of the machine to
a given variable flow-head pattern.

3 Case Study

3.1 System Characteristics.

Araujo et al. (2006) compared the effect of different number of control valves on the reduc-
tion of leaks in the water distribution networks of Jowitt and Xu (1990) reproduced in
Fig. 3. The network presents 34 branches and 22 internal nodes and 3 tanks. The daily
average demand of the network equals to 121.5 l/s, corresponding to a population ranged
between 26000 and 70000 inhabitants (in) and a daily water consumption ranging between
150 l/(in · day) and 400 l/(in · day)). The localization of valves in each scenario, as com-
puted by the optimization model, and corresponding level of leaks are reported in Table 1,
together with the diameter D of the installation pipe. Results obtained with a different opti-
mization technique by Liberatore and Sechi (2009) on the same network led to only slightly
different results. It is evident that leakage will be significantly reduced by just adding of
a couple of valves, and that the optimized results are obtained with the installation of six
valves. This network has been used as case study by many researchers (Campisano et al.
2009; Vairavamoorthy and Lumbers 1998).
Hydropower Potential in WDNs: Pressure Control by PATs 703

Fig. 3 Sketch diagram of Jowitt and Xu (1990) water distribution network used as case study, with the
numbering of branches and nodes

Araujo et al. (2006) furnished, as a part of their solution, the optimal operational dynamic
control of each valve, and this data has been used in this case study. A hydro-power plant
in HR mode is configured to reproduce the operational dynamic control of valves. The
economic benefit of the substitution of a number of valves with hydro-power plants has
been investigated and is presented in the succeeding sections.

3.2 Hydro-power Design

According to the operational dynamic control of throttle control valves proposed by Araujo
et al. (2006), the software EPANET version 2.0 (http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/wswrd/dw/
epanet.html) has been applied to obtain the flow rate and head drop daily patterns of the
valves of each scenario. EPANET is a computer software that solves the flow continu-
ity and head loss equations by the gradient method by Todini and Pilati (1988), given the
discharge flowing in or out of each node. Head-losses in the pressurized pipes are mod-
eled by the Darcy-Weisbach formula, while valves are treated as pipes where the resistance
depends on the opening. In Fig. 4 the hourly average discharge and the available head val-
ues are plotted for each PRS in each scenario. In the scenarios III-V, the valves installed

Table 1 Leak reduction for the different simulated scenarios (Araujo et al. 2006)

Average Average
Scenario Installation pipe leaks leak
[l/s] reduction

0 − − − − − − − 27.3 −
I − − − − 37 − − 23.5 13.92 %
II 01 − − − 37 − − 22.8 16.48 %
III − − − − 37 40 41 23.3 14.65 %
IV 01 − 28 31 37 − − 22.2 18.68 %
V 01 − − 31 37 40 41 22.6 17.21 %
VI 01 15 28 31 37 40 − 22.1 19.04 %
D [mm] 500 300 250 400 500 250 150
704 O. Fecarotta et al.

Fig. 4 Available discharge and head in each PRS for scenarios I-VI

on pipes 41, 28 and 41 respectively are are completely closed. Thus, gate valves can be
used instead. All PRSs deals with a discharge less than 50 l/s except the one installed on
pipe 37.
Based on these discharge-head patterns, VOS procedure has been applied, selecting the
best commercial pump utilizing among the centrifugal and semi-axial pumps produced by
Caprari (an Italian manufacturer). PAT available characteristic curves were obtained either
experimentally or by numerical techniques (Carravetta et al. 2011). The turbomachinery
affinity law (Carravetta et al. 2014b) has been used in order to calculate the characteristic
curve of each machine for different values of rotating velocity. The feasible rotating velocity
is considered in the range between 750 and 3200 rpm, since the machines can be coupled
with 8, 6, 4 and 2 poles motors, and a speed drive can be used to modify the rotating
speed from the synchronizing value. Thus, for each production/dissipation node, the optimal
PAT for the installation of a hydropower station has been calculated as the machine which
maximizes (1). The available discharge and head values of Fig. 4 have been used as input
data.
In Table 2 the seven optimal machines (here identified as a, b, c, d, e, f, g) are indicated
as well as their installation pipe, their BEP power (PBEP ) and their operating speed. In the
8 − th column of Table 2, the values of the objective function of the optimization procedure,
namely ηp , are showed. The maximum power (Pmax ) and the daily produced energy (Epr )
of each PRS are presented as additional information.
In three cases (pipe 41 of the scenario III, pipe 28 of the scenario IV and pipe 41 of
the scenario V) VOS procedure did not indicate any PAT able to produce energy, since at
those nodes the flow is zero and a simple closed gate valve is suitable. In few cases the
plant efficiency is above 40 % while in other few cases only about one tenth of the available
energy can be converted.
Hydropower Potential in WDNs: Pressure Control by PATs 705

Table 2 Characteristics of each hydropower plant (SSS - Semi axial Single Stage; SMS - Semi axial Multi
Stage; CSS - Centrifugal Single Stage)

Installation Machine PBEP Pmax Epr ηp Speed

Scenario
pipe and type [W ] [W ] [kW h/day] [−] [rpm]

I 37 a/SSS 4743 3218 37.67 0.423 750

1 b/CSS 352 597 9.53 0.374 750
II
37 a/SSS 4743 3194 37.80 0.415 750
37 c/SSS 2265 2465 30.99 0.402 750
III 40 d/SMS 219 288 1.03 0.354 800
41 − − − − − −
1 b/CSS 352 596 11.09 0.396 750
28 − − − − − −
IV
31 b/CSS 352 188 0.33 0.109 750
37 a/SSS 4743 3598 45.85 0.453 750
1 b/CSS 352 582 9.68 0.388 750
31 b/CSS 352 181 0.27 0.102 750
V 37 e/SSS 2112 2341 25.03 0.351 750
40 d/SMS 180 304 0.32 0.117 750
41 − − − − − −
1 f/CSS 491 705 8.30 0.355 850
15 f/CSS 409 412 0.41 0.074 800
28 d/SMS 180 124 0.23 0.233 750
VI
31 d/SMS 180 279 1.36 0.211 750
37 g/SSS 2249 2941 24.83 0.308 750
40 f/CSS 337 526 3.46 0.379 750

Only in one case (pipe 15 of scenario VI) the rotational speed is 800 rpm, which equals
the velocity of an asynchronous generator with 8 poles, while in the other cases a mechanical
speed drive is needed. All these results give important information about the benefit from
the substitution of a valve in a water distribution network, but do not indicate which is the
best design solution. To this aim, an intensive economic analysis has been performed in
order to find the optimal scenario.

4 Economic and Financial Feasibility

4.1 Best Design Solution

The convenience of a micro-hydro power plant in a water distribution network, where a PAT
substitutes a valve in order to convert the head dissipation to energy production, has been
proved by Carravetta et al. (2013a).
In this paper, several design solutions have been proposed: the leakage reduction can be
achieved with a different number of PRSs, from 1 to 6, and each of them can be equipped
with either a regulating valve or a hydropower system. The best design solution can be
706 O. Fecarotta et al.

identified as the scenario which maximizes the Net Present Value (NPV), which can be
defined as follows:  
Ri
NP V = i=1 n
− I + Vr (2)
(1 + r)i
where Ri are the net cash flow during the i-th years, n is the considered number of years, I
is the start investment, r the discount rate and Vr is the residual value of the plant after the
considered base period.
The cash flow, which determines the NP V , depends both on the cost of the equipment,
which results in the I value, and on both the water costs and the electricity selling prices
which together produce the cash inflow during the life of the plant. In this study, 10 years are
considered as base period for the assessment of NPV, since it can be considered a reasonable
time period for the evaluation of an energetic investment of a water company. Thus, both the
residual value and the maintenance costs can be neglected with a satisfying approximation.
Obviously, both the water costs and the energy prices depend on the country. Thus, a litera-
ture review has been performed in order to assess the different tariffs and their influence on
the design solutions.

4.2 Water Tariffs and Water Costs

Assessment of the cost of water is fundamental in the evaluation of economic savings pro-
duced by leakages reduction. Even if the water tariff is a widely accessible information, it
is not useful in the evaluation of savings, because it comprises a lot of different issues, like
taxes, company profits and the cost of leakage itself. The parameter which allows the cal-
culation of the money savings is the water unit cost, which can be considered as the sum
of water resourcing, treatment, pumping and distribution. Such value is very difficult to
obtain by water companies, but in 2005 Water Services Regulation Authority, which is the
body responsible for economic regulation of the privatized water and sewerage industry in
England and Wales, investigated the water delivery costs of several water companies which
serve different cities of the world (OFWAT 2005). In such report, the water cost is avail-
able only for the UK and the USA, while for several other countries it can be assessed as
60 % of the cost of operations (which is the sum of water costs and buisness activities). The
results of that research are summarized in Table 3, together with the water cost in southern
Italy, which is the average of several values obtained by the Authors from different Southern
Italian water companies.

4.3 Energy Production Tariffs

The energy selling price can be variable in time according to the market, therefore a precise
business prevision can be very difficult. Nevertheless, in several countries there are interest-
ing subsidies (namely feed-in tariffs) for the production and the sale of renewable energies,
which results in long term contracts (i.e. 15 or 20 years) for the generation of energy. Unfor-
tunately, such tariffs are widely established for solar energy (Reiche and Bechberger 2004),
while only few countries guarantee special tariffs for hydropower.
The current situation in some countries is reported in Table 3.

4.4 Installation Costs

The evaluation of the installation costs has been performed, using the market values of
PATs, valves, PAT hydraulic circuit, speed drive and piping, which are reported in Table 4.
Hydropower Potential in WDNs: Pressure Control by PATs 707

Table 3 Cost of operations (COP), buisness activities (BA) and water costs (WC), together with energy
tariff, for different countries

Six cities group includes Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo
Acronyms: UK-United Kingdom, DK-Denmark, FI-Finland, NW-Norway, SE-Sweden, NL-Holland, AUS-
Australia, US-United States, IT-Italy, QLD-Queensland, VIC-Victoria, SA-Southern Australia, NSW-New
South Wales, WA-Western Australia
References for Energy tariffs are: (Fouquet 2012), http://www.fitariff.co.uk, http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au,
http://www.nipsco.com, http://www.cpuc.ca.gov
708 O. Fecarotta et al.

Table 4 Market values of hydromechanical devices (φ is the diameter of the valve in mm)

Device Price [e] Device Price [e]

a 6800 φ 50 7200
b 1700 φ 80 7700
c 6500 φ 100 8500
PATs d 3100 φ 125 9400
e 6500 φ 150 10000
Valves
f 1200 φ 200 13000
g 6500 φ 250 16300
Speed drive 300 φ 300 22400
Piping 2000 φ 400 30700
Grid connection 500 φ 500 42000

The cost of a PRS without a PAT along a pipe equals the cost of the control valve (C vlv ),
whose diameter depends on the maximum flow along the pipe and the maximum allowed
velocity in the valve. The total cost of the hydro power plant (C hp ) is the sum of the machine
cost, piping (2000 ehave been considered as average total cost of piping) and speed drive,
together with the cost of two control valves (series and parallel) whose diameter are chosen
depending on the flow pattern. The reported costs of the valves refers to regulating hydro-
valves with SCADA system and remote control. For the hydropower plant, the additional
cost of grid connection has been evaluated as 500 e, which includes the administrative
allowances, the physical connection and the control, measurement and safety devices. The
costs of the gate valves of scenario III, IV and V have been neglected. The installation costs
of each PRS, either with a single control valve or a PAT, are reported in Table 5.

4.5 Discount Rate

The discount rate can be considered as the the opportunity cost of capital, i.e. the rate of
return that could be earned on an investment in the financial markets with similar risk. In
the case where the company is financed with only equity, and both the costs of water and
the energy tariffs can be considered not variable, the risk of the investment is very low, and
the discount rate can be computed as the discount rate of governments bond. Table 6 shows
the last 10 years averaged values of bonds for the considered countries.

4.6 Results

With the collected information about the costs and the tariffs, (2) can be specialized in:

NP V = B e + B w − C hp − C vlv (3)
where:
 
tiP
B =
e n
i=1 (4)
(1 + r)i
 
Ciw
B w = i=1
n
(5)
(1 + r)i
Hydropower Potential in WDNs: Pressure Control by PATs 709

Table 5 Total installation costs of pressure reducing station with either valves or hydropower plants (φ is
the diameter of the valve in mm)

Installation C vlv Valve Valve Speed C hp

Scenario Valve Machine
pipe [e] A B drive [e]

I 37 φ 250 16300 a φ 200 φ 200 yes 35600

1 φ 100 8500 b φ 80 φ 100 yes 20700
II
37 φ 250 16300 a φ 200 φ 200 yes 35600
37 φ 250 16300 c φ 200 φ 200 yes 35300
III 40 φ 100 8500 d φ 50 φ 100 no 21300
41 − − − − − − −
1 φ 100 8500 b φ 80 φ 80 yes 19900
28 − − − − − − −
IV
31 φ 80 7700 b φ 80 φ 80 yes 19900
37 φ 250 16300 a φ 200 φ 200 yes 35600
1 φ 100 8500 b φ 80 φ 100 yes 20700
31 φ 80 7700 b φ 80 φ 80 yes 19900
V 37 φ 250 16300 e φ 200 φ 200 yes 35300
40 φ 100 8500 d φ 50 φ 100 yes 21600
11 − − − − − − −
1 φ 100 8500 f φ 100 φ 100 yes 21000
15 φ 150 10000 f φ 100 φ 150 no 22200
28 φ 100 8500 d φ 50 φ 100 yes 21600
VI
31 φ 80 7700 d φ 50 φ 80 yes 20800
37 φ 300 22400 g φ 200 φ 200 yes 35300
40 φ 125 9400 f φ 100 φ 125 yes 21900

tiP is the year income of produced energy, Ciw the year savings of costs of water,
C is the cost for the installation of the hydropower stations and C vlv the cost of
hp

the valves. Thus, B e and B w are the capitalized benefit of produced energy and saved
water.
Firstly, the NPVs of the different solution proposed by Araujo et al. (2006), using
only valves for pressure control, have been calculated for the different countries, as ref-
erence condition. In this case, in Eq. 3, B e and C hp equal to zero. The results of NPV
calculation are plotted in Fig. 5. The best NPVs correspond to the installation of four
valves.
The installation of one or more PATs to replace of valves can modify the optimal solu-
tion, because B e and C hp of Eq. 3 should be taken into account in the calculation of
NPVs. The modification of NPV depends on which and how many PRSs are conidered
for the PAT installation. Among all the combinations of PATs and valves, the solution that

Table 6 10-years averaged values of Government bonds rate

Country IT UK DK SE FI NL AU US

Bond rate 0.0542 0.0194 0.0154 0.0168 0.0197 0.0215 0.0342 0.0188
710 O. Fecarotta et al.

Fig. 5 Calculated NPVs for the installation of valves aimed to water savings

maximizes the NPV has been found as the installation of three PATs (at pipes 1, 31 and
37) in scenario IV (for all countries). Moreover, for each scenario, the increase of NPV
(NP V ) due to the presence of PATs is shown in Fig. 6. The plot of Fig. 6 shows that the
increase of NPV is considerable if compared with the small maximum (always less than
4 kW ) and daily average (always less than 2 kW ) power and the large variability of the
flow.

Fig. 6 Increase of NPV (NP V ) due to the valve substitution by PATs

Hydropower Potential in WDNs: Pressure Control by PATs 711

Fig. 7 Optimal solution for all countries

In Fig. 7 the location of PATs and valves in the optimal solution is plotted.
The values of Table 3 are concerning specific companies and are considered herein as
average values for each country. The real water supply conditions for the water companies
can be different and two more scenarios are described below:

– free access to water resource

– scarcity of water during dry months.

4.6.1 Free Access to Water Resource

In some cases, water companies have free access to water resources. That is, for exam-
ple, the case of several mountain towns, where there is a large availability of pure water
and the cost of leakage can be neglected in the financial balance. In such cases, for the
calculation of NPV, the cost of water Ciw becomes negligible but the scheduled reduc-
tion of pressure in the network could be equally pursued in order to improve water
delivering standards, prevent pipe damages or preserve the ground from subsidence and
caving-in due to water losses. In such cases the importance of the installation of hydropower
devices is relevant, because the produced energy constitutes the only cash inflow and conse-
quently the only chance to amortize the investment. In Fig. 8, the NPVs for the considered
cases where the water resources was free or unconstrained are plotted. Figure 8 shows that
only few solutions are economically convenient, and only in those regions where the energy
tariff is reasonably high.

4.6.2 Scarcity of Water During Dry Months

Another typical situation for water companies is the large availability of the water
resource during the wet months, while the cost of water substantially increases dur-
ing summer and dry months (i.e. more consumption, pumping from wells or basins,
additional treatments). In such case the NPV of the pressure reducing investment
can be calculated taking into account the water cost savings gathered during the wet
months. Figure 9 shows that even with only one month of water scarcity annually, the
investment in the reduction of pressure becomes economically viable in all considered
countries.
712 O. Fecarotta et al.

Fig. 8 Best NPVs when the access to water resource is free

5 Conclusions

The reduction of water leakage can be achieved by means of an effective control of the head
patterns in water distribution networks. An equivalent performance in terms of regulation
between PRSs and small hydropower system using a pump as turbine (PAT) as energy pro-
duction device offers a new opportunity for pressure control. Indeed, a hydropower plant
with a hydraulic regulated PAT can be configured to reproduce the operational dynamic

Fig. 9 Best NPVs with 1 month of water scarcity per year

Hydropower Potential in WDNs: Pressure Control by PATs 713

control of valves. In this study, the economical convenience of the replacement of a certain
number of valves with a hydropower plant was investigated in terms of water savings and
produced energy, with reference to a literature network. The reduction of leakage of the ana-
lyzed network can be performed with several proposed design solution. Six scenarios, with
a different number of pressure reducing stations (PRS) each, have been analyzed. Each PRS
can be equipped with either a valve or a PAT plant. The 10-years net present value (NPV)
of each design solution has been investigated, considering both the savings of water and the
selling price of produced energy for different countries. The savings of water mostly influ-
ence the NPV, while the installation of hydropower plants produces a considerable increase
of benefits even in presence of small installed power a variable hydraulic characteristics.
Thus, the minimization of leakage could be economically convenient even in the areas
where the water is abundant and its cost is very low, with consequent environmental benefits.

Acknowledgments The Authors would like to thank Lauro Antipodi and Caprari spa for having provided
the data about the PATs and Enrico Righi and Raci srl for having provided the data about the valves.

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