Conjunctive optimal design of water and power networks

Water distribution systems (WDS) and power grids (PG) are critical infrastructure systems that are vital to all human activity. As such, their quality of service is of great importance for economic, environmental, and human welfare reasons. Although traditionally being analyzed separately, the two systems are interconnected and can mutually affect one another. In order to utilize the potential benefits that the two systems can produce for each other, their design and operation should be analyzed conjunctively. In this paper, a conjunctive optimal design approach for water and power networks is presented, with the objective of finding the dimensions of the systems’ facilities that will result in minimal overall costs, for both design and operation. The model is formulated and implemented on two example applications using an off-the-shelf nonlinear solver by MATLAB and compared to the optimal design of the independent WDS. A sensitivity analysis is performed to provide validity to the obtained results. The conjunctive design is compared to the design of an independent WDS to emphasize the effect of including the PG in the optimization problem. Results show a clear link between the availability of renewable energy and sizing of WDS components. The design of the independent WDS leads to the violation of PG constraints, which are satisfied when including both systems under a single optimization model, demonstrating the importance of a holistic design approach.