Water Delivery System Planning Considering Irrigation Simultaneity

Time should be considered in carrying out the design and management of demand irrigation distribution systems. In this paper, a method to characterize the pumping flow in demand pressurized systems throughout the day and irrigation season is presented. This method considers the temporal evolution of water requirements during the irrigation season and water demand concentration in certain periods of the irrigation day due to different electrical energy charges. The model was established based on data from an actual water distribution network of an irrigation district in southern Spain. The results differed significantly from those obtained using approaches based on establishing a uniform working probability for the outlets of the water distribution network at all hours of the irrigation day, which underestimated the circulating flows or system capacity. The most probable pumping flow with uniform probability was 3.1 m3/s, a smaller value than those obtained in the off-peak and average energy tariff times (4 and 3.4 m3/s, respectively). The total energy head required at the booster pumping in each period of the irrigation season was simulated. 10,000 randomly chosen scenarios were simulated for each irrigation day and each energy tariff time. The heterogeneous vertical stratification between 50 and 103 m of the required piezometric head was obtained as a function of the demanded flow for the water distribution system. This paper includes a pump selection algorithm for recommending least cost or optimum pump combinations in the distribution network and to evaluate the system’s energy cost. The pump recommendations show that the optimal solution could have saved 41% of the pumping cost of the Fuente Palmera irrigation district.