Finding Least-Cost Pump Schedules for Reservoir Filling with a Variable Speed Pump

Abstract

This paper presents a simple and straightforward technique to solve the problem of least-cost reservoir filling with the help of a variable speed pump in the case of a highly simplified hydraulic system. Although artificial performance curves are used, the presented technique is directly applicable for real-life hydraulic systems of the same topology. The technique is based on keeping the specific energy consumption of the pump as low as possible and uses easy-to-implement control policy. Because of the simplicity of the model, it is believed that it can serve as a tutorial or benchmark problem for pump-schedule optimization problems. The near optimality of the results is demonstrated numerically by comparing them to the solution of a general-purpose global optimization software.