Energy recovery of urban water networks towards new park charging

Abstract

Water distribution networks have high values of energy consumption due to water pumping and treatment. It’s common that this huge energy usage it’s not used efficiently in the whole network, which leads into excessive water pressures in the systems that, nowadays, is just lost commonly in pressure reducing valves (PRV) or at entrance to tanks or reservoirs. However, this problem leads into a potential energy that can be recovered, creating new steps into a more sustainable water network management and energy consumption. This can be harnessed by means of a pump working as a turbine (PAT), an innovative technology that has been deeply studied these last years with great results in terms of energy recovery of a renewable energy source. This dissertation analyses a typical urban irrigation system in Lisbon in order to obtain and optimize energy recovery from the network with PATs technology. This generated energy is aimed to cover the demand of two electric bikes’ charging Gira stations in Lisbon. A designing process is carried out to obtain maximum energy generating values from the system, and the main components to unify the solution with the charging system are implemented. This project contributes to renewable energy and green mobility, creating a more sustainable urban environment. An economic, environmental and social assessment is carried out with the objective of evaluating the feasibility and different impacts induced by the developed solutions.