Open and closed loop pressure control for leakage reduction

Abstract The UK water industry is addressing the major challenge of reducing leakage from water supply and distribution networks. It is widely accepted that a significant proportion of leakage is attributable to many small leaks (e.g., through fittings). Operational pressure control is a cost-effective action for reducing such leakage. This paper formulates and investigates methods for planning and implementation of on-line control strategies of predictive and feedback control for areas with many pressure reducing valves and many target points. The considered methods explicitly take into account a leakage model. The results are applied to an area with three pressure reducing valves and two target points.