Every time a person in Bucharest, Romania turns on the tap, the water flows far. Around 2,500km of pipes are hidden underground, and transport the water from outside Bucharest into the city.
Water supply company Apa Nova Bucharest is in charge of improving these pipes and assuring that 2 million people in Bucharest have access to fresh water.
“We have quite an old water network, so every day we are working on optimising it so the inhabitants of Bucharest get a stable water supply,” says Apa Nova director Arnaud Valleteau de Moulliac. “We want to do it in a way where we use less energy and minimise water loss,” he continues.
Apa Nova Bucharest took over the responsibility of running the Romanian capital’s water supply in 2000. Back then, the water network and pumping stations were in bad shape. Residential water meters were unheard of, the water supply was unstable and many pipes leaked. Since then, Apa Nova has improved the water quality by changing approximately 20km of pipes each year. The company also optimised its pumps, leading to a 70% decrease in electric power consumption since 2000.
Valleteau de Moulliac says: “We have come a long way, but there is still room for improvement, I must say. We are always striving to do better, and I don’t think that I will ever be completely satisfied.”
An intelligent system
According to Valleteau de Moulliac, Apa Nova adjusted more than 200 pumping stations from 2001 to 2009. However, there is still more water to save. To do this, Apa Nova worked with global pump systems supplier Grundfos to build a Demand Driven Distribution (DDD) solution at a pumping station that delivers water to approximately 50,000 people.
The DDD system consists of several parallel connected pumps that run in isolation or simultaneously according to customer needs. The system has an intelligent controller, which adapts output to water needs throughout the day. This controller not only saves energy, it also ensures that the network is less stressed than normal, which means water is not wasted due to leakages.
“We work in close co-operation with Grundfos, and we always invest time and money in our network. We see this as a good opportunity to see how much more we can lower our energy consumption and water leakages,” says Valleteau de Moulliac.
A solution for every town
At the Titan pumping station in eastern Bucharest, pumps drive water through 24km of pipes in the surrounding area. The DDD solution can make the pumps here run even more efficiently, says Leonard Stroe, Grundfos Romania sales manager for water utility.
“Right now, we are measuring how much energy is being used when we run the pumps more intelligently using a special controller, and we can see that it is possible to save up to 15% in this area,” he says.
In other cities, where the water network now runs with a constant pressure, the potential savings can be up to 50%.
Arnaud Valleteau de Moulliac says that the area being tested represents just one part of the high pressure network, and he expects that the solution can be used at other pumping stations, too.
“Our main driver is to use the most innovative technology available, and the DDD solution is one of them,” he says.
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Content on this page is paid for and provided by Grundfos, sponsor of the water hub
