Testing minimum cost strategies of pumping systems with scheduled electric tariffs in a lab scale plant

This paper describes the development and testing of a lab plant that emulates a water supply pumping system with the objective of testing optimal pumping strategies based on standard solvers. The emulated system consists of two tanks that supply the water to two districts in a town. There are two pumps, that can fill the tanks through a reconfigurable hydraulic system with several valves. The automatic controller determines the valves and pumps that are active at each instant of time in order to minimize the operation cost, taking into account the electric tariff periods. Some aspects on the development of the lab plant are first discussed, including hydraulic aspects and real time control implementation issues. Then, a mathematical model is proposed to be able to formulate, in matrix form, the cost index and the constraints, such that, standard solvers as Mosek or CBC can be used. The full optimization proposal is tested on several experiments, and compared to some simulations, to demonstrate the validity of the plant and the optimization approach.