Benefit and Cost Analysis of Network and Service Connection Renewal in Distribution Systems for Sustainable Water Loss Management

Abstract

Reducing the rate of non-revenue water (NRW) in water distribution systems (WDSs) has become one of the most important goals for utilities. Increasing water losses bring along social, economic and technical difficulties, which accelerates the work to be done to reduce water losses. Although water losses are combated by applying active and passive leakage methods, in some cases it may not be economical for the utilities to manage the network under current conditions and to continue the efforts to reduce water losses. The aging network and its equipment can now make it difficult to manage this system. In these cases, the method of rehabilitating the whole or partial parts of the network is applied. It is possible to transfer and monitor the network and its components to the GIS database, to reduce the risk of failure and to have low operating costs, to prevent and reduce leaks in subscriber connections by manufacturing service connections to the meter, to keep the NRW rate at a very low level, and to increase subscriber satisfaction and service quality with the application of this method. In a distribution system, in case the existing network conditions are preserved, current failure rates, network operation, maintenance and repair costs, new water source search and energy costs, initial investment and medium and long-term operating costs in case of network renewal should be taken into consideration and benefit-cost analyzes should be made. Due to the high level of pipe material, labor and construction costs, a detailed cost-benefit analysis and alternative solutions should be evaluated before the network renewal approach is preferred. In this study, the current costs and benefits that will be encountered in case of renewal of the entire network (network + service connection), only subscriber lines or only network lines for a sample network are discussed. The results show that it is that the rehabilitation method to be chosen for different network conditions has a serious effect on increasing the planned benefit.

Keywords

• Water distribution network
• network renewal
• cost analysis
• benefit analysis.

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