Sustainability, Vol. 12, Pages 738: Standalone Photovoltaic Direct Pumping in Urban Water Pressurized Networks with Energy Storage in Tanks or Batteries (Sustainability)

Photovoltaic energy production is nowadays one of the hottest topics in the water industry as this green energy source is becoming more and more workable in countries like Spain, with high values of irradiance. In water pressurized systems supplying urban areas, they distribute energy consumption in pumps throughout the day, and it is not possible to supply electromechanical devices without energy storages such as batteries. Additionally, it is not possible to manage energy demand for water consumption. Researchers and practitioners have proven batteries to be reliable energy storage systems, and are undertaking many efforts to increase their performance, capacity, and useful life. Water pressurized networks incorporate tanks as devices used for accumulating water during low consumption hours while releasing it in peak hours. The compensation tanks work here as a mass and energy source in water pressurized networks supplied with photovoltaic arrays (not electricity grids). This work intends to compare which of these two energy storage systems are better and how to choose between them considering that these two systems involve running the network as a standalone pumping system without being connected to electricity grids. This work also calculates the intermediate results, considering both photovoltaic arrays and electricity grids for supplying electricity to pumping systems. We then analyzed these three cases in a synthetic network (used in earlier research) considering the effect of irradiation and water consumption, as we did not state which should be the most unfavorable month given that higher irradiance coincides with higher water consumption (i.e., during summer). Results show that there is no universal solution as energy consumption depends on the network features and that energy production depends very much on latitude. We based the portfolio of alternatives on investments for purchasing different equipment at present (batteries, pipelines, etc.) based on economic criteria so that the payback period is the indicator used for finding the best alternative, which is the one with the lowest value.