Anton Friedl, Jiří J. Klemeš, Stefan Radl, Petar S. Varbanov, Thomas Wallek (Eds.

)
Proceedings of the 28th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering
June 10th to 13th, 2018, Graz, Austria. © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Optimisation of water supply systems in the water –

energy nexus: Model development and
implementation to support decision making in
investment planning
Christiana M. Papapostolou a*, Emilia M. Kondilia, Georgios Tzanesb
a
Optimisation of Production Systems Laboratory,
b
Soft Energy Applications and Environmental Protection Laboratory
Mechanical Engineering Department, Piraeus University of Applied Sciences, 250 P.
Ralli and Thivon Av., 122 44 Athens Greece
ekondili@puas.gr

Abstract
Water resources availability, in terms of quality and quantity, is a very crucial issue in
many areas of the world; especially in areas with water shortage and varying and time
dependent water demand. Lately, it has become obvious that water supply chain problems
are also inherently linked to the energy availability and quality of an area, leading to the
so called water – energy nexus problems. The present work is a continuation of our
ongoing research in the optimisation of water and energy supply chain in terms of
maximising the overall benefit of the integrated system, whilst satisfying the conflicting
demands. The objective of the work is to expand the model for water supply optimisation
to take into account all the potential water supply sources intending to support decision
making in investments planning, with environmental considerations.
Keywords: water resources optimisation, water energy integration, economic and
environmental criteria

1. Introduction. Scope and objectives of the work

Water resources availability, in terms of quality and quantity, is a very crucial issue in
many areas of the world; especially in areas with water shortage and varying and time
dependent water demand. Lately, it has become obvious that water supply chain problems
are also inherently linked to the energy availability and quality of an area, leading to the
so called water – energy nexus problems.
In parallel, energy is a focal point in the water supply since in many cases it is in fact the
limiting factor for the implementation of various water supply methods. For example,
desalination methods being technologically mature and easily accessible, could provide
easy and not particularly expensive water. However, the high energy demand of
desalination methods sets constraints in the implementation of the method.
Furthermore, water recycle from waste water treatment plants may also provide a very
important water supply method in various areas where there is no other method that could
be applied. However, the water transportation from the production point to the
distribution network requires energy and again the two problems may be considered in an
integrated manner. For the application of the developed framework, a case study in
2 C. Papapostolou et al.

Cyclades island has been carried out in order to designate optimum water supply chain
characteristics, along with the solution of the energy supply chain (ESC) problem,
ultimately aiming to maximise the total benefit of the systems – as this is defined in the
work. The results of the problem solution, the applicability of the model in various water
– energy nexus as well as the importance and relevance of the issue in the CAPE
community are also highlighted in the work.
Over the past decade, the integrated approach for the solution of water and energy
problems, i.e. the so called ‘water – energy nexus’ has become a topic of increasing
attention for the scientific communities and practitioners in the field. There is a
continuous increase in the academic papers as well as in the professional studies
demonstrating the improving capacity of the scientific community to assess in an
integrated approach the water and energy problems.
Indicatively some of the most recent works related to the water – energy nexus may be
cited. Saeed Kaddoura and SamehEl Khatib (2017) make a detailed review of the existing
nexus modelling tools used for integrated policy making and identify the capabilities and
limitations of each modelling tool in order to help readers select the appropriate tool for
their objective.
Jiangyu Daia et al (2018) in their very recent research work make an extensive survey of
recent scientific literature on the water-energy nexus, where 70 studies were identified
and 35 were selected as comprehensive case studies for review. From this review it is
clear that the research on water-energy nexus has seen a significant increase in both the
number of studies and the capacity of the scientific community to productively assess
water and energy interlinkages at a higher resolution. Fewer approaches are designed to
support governance and implementation of technical solutions, and this is considered to
be a priority challenge area for the scientific community if it aims to achieve greater
impact on resource policy and management.
Daniel J. Garcia and Fengqi You (2016) relate the Water – Energy – Food nexus approach
with Process Systems Engineering principles and identify process systems engineering
research opportunities to appropriately model and optimize the nexus. It is clear from
their work that there are further challenges with appropriate system boundary definitions
and challenges in modeling the decision-making and conflicting objectives of multiple
stakeholders in the nexus.
Focusing attention in the very crucial issue of water resources management and its
sustainability considerations, Pires et al evaluate how indicators related to water use and
management perform against a set of sustainability criteria assessing 170 indicators
through an international panel of experts that evaluated whether they fulfil the four
sustainability criteria: social, economic, environmental, and institutional.
Studying all these works it is obvious that very significant progress has been achieved but
still there is a very wide scope for further work in the field since there are many features
of the integrated problem that are not well understood yet and there is a very challenging
area of problems that is focused either in specific geographical regions or in very specific
characteristics of the problem itself.
The present work is a continuation of our ongoing research in the optimisation of water
and energy supply chain in terms of maximising the overall benefit of the integrated
system, whilst satisfying the conflicting demands. The objective of the work is to expand
Optimisation of WSS in the water energy: An investement planning implementation 3

the model for water supply optimisation to take into account all the potential water supply
sources along with their environmental and social impacts intending to support decision
making in investments planning.

2. Case study
The optimisation model that has been developed in Papapostolou et al (2017) is
implemented for a small island in Cyclades complex, called Iraklia. Iraklia - named after
the Greek mythological god Hercules - is the westernmost island of the Small Cyclades
complex with an area of 18 thousand square kilometres, located 18 nautical miles
southern of Naxos, the largset island of Cyclades complex. The small island has 151
inhabitants settled in Panagia and Agios Georgios, the main settlement and the port,
respectively.
At each aforementioned locations, there are two water tanks: the one in Panagia can store
up to 1000m3, while the capacity of the Agios Georgios is 500m3. The latter presents
significant water shortages, especially during the summer months which up till now have
been met via ship-transfers (Figure 1), with a specific water transportation cost of
~15€/m3. For that purpose, the state has financially supported the installation of a
desalination plant (300m3/day), which will be powered by a local diesel power station.

Water Shipments (Needs) to Iraklia (2013)

3500
3000
2500
in m3

2000
1500
1000
500
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Figure 1: Annual water shipments to Iraklia throughout 2013 (YPEKA, 2016)

In Iraklia, as in most of the Aegean Sea islands, the electricity needs present a large
fluctuation between winter and summer seasons, mainly attributed to tourism. More
specifically, the load peak, which occurs during August, is nearly 4 times the average
load during winter. The water demand has also a similar profile through time. Considering
that the new desalination plant will produce as much water as is currently transported and
the existing water supply strategy wherein the available water tanks’ level should remain
constantly at their maximum capacity, the electricity demand fluctuation will further be
increased.
To deal with the load demand additions and to further reduce the total operational cost of
the system, the option of installing RES is evaluated, accounting typical investment costs
per kW installed for the diesel (850€/kW), wind (1400€/kW), PV (1200€/kW) and for the
energy-storage (Batteries 650€/kWh), desalination (1667 €/m3) for a project life-span of
25 years and granting typical annual fixed costs (See Tables 1, 2) whilst only for the diesel
power station the specific fuel cost at (1.7€/lt) applies. Additionally, in an effort to predict
4 C. Papapostolou et al.

more accurately the actual costs, the replacement of infrastructure parts has also been
considered, as follows in Eq. (1):
𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁𝑉
𝑃𝑟𝑟 ∗ 𝐼𝑁𝑉𝑟𝑟 𝑃𝑠𝑠 ∗ 𝐼𝑁𝑉𝑠𝑠 𝑃𝑤𝑟𝑤𝑟 ∗ 𝐼𝑁𝑉𝑤𝑟𝑤𝑟
∑𝑟 [ ] + ∑𝑠 [ ] + ∑𝑤𝑟 [ ]+
∗ (1 + 𝑛 ∗ 𝐹𝐶𝑟𝑟 ) ∗ (1 + 𝑛 ∗ 𝐹𝐶𝑠 ) ∗ (1 + 𝑛 ∗ 𝐹𝐶𝑤𝑟𝑤𝑟 )
=
(1 + 𝑖)𝑛
𝑛 ∗ (∑𝑡 ∑𝑟 𝐸𝐺𝑟𝑡,𝑟 ∗ 𝐹𝐶𝑟𝑟 + ∑𝑡 ∑𝑠 𝐸𝑆𝑔𝑡,𝑠 ∗ 𝐹𝐶𝑠𝑠 + ∑𝑡 ∑𝑤𝑟 𝐹𝑤𝑟𝑡,𝑤𝑟 ∗ 𝐹𝐶𝑤𝑟𝑤𝑟 )
+ (1)
(1 + 𝑖)𝑛

where the “r”, represents the different set of resources (wind, diesel and PV), “s” the
storage station(s), “wr” the water resources (shipment and desalination) and “P” the
nominal capacity of the resources, storage stations and water resources accordingly.
Moreover, the installation cost “INV”, and the annual fixed cost “FC” are also considered
for a time horizon “n” of 25 years, with an inflation rate “i” of 3%.
Table 1: Problem design pameters Table 2: Problem cost pameters
Parameter Assigned Cost Parameter Assigned Values
Values
*Wind park installation cost (€/
Ship transfer water - cost 1,350
(€/m3)
10 kW)1
*PV park installation cost (€/
Diesel fuel cost 1.7€/lt 1,200
kW)2
Desalination capacity 3
300 m /day *Diesel station cost (€/ kW) 3
850
Water reservoir 500 m3 *Battery specific cost (€/kWh) 4 650
Initial water level 100m3 *RO desalination plant cost (€/m3)
5 1667
Batteries Depth of Discharge 90% 3% x total initial cost1
Desalination energy 1.5% x total initial cost2
5kWh/m3
consumption Annual fixed cost 5% x total initial cost3
Inflation rate 3% 0.5% x total initial cost4
2% x total initial cost5

So, under the model setup introduced by Papapostolou et al. (2017), energy and water
demand fulfillment will be investigated under a set of energy SCs (wind, PV, diesel and
battery energy storage). The following equation describes the energy balance to be
preserved, for each time step t (8760 hours per year), for s=1, one battery storgage station
Eq. (2):

∑ 𝐸𝐺𝑟𝑟 + 𝐸𝑆𝑔𝑠 − 𝐸𝑆𝑠𝑠 −𝐸𝑑𝑤𝑟𝑤𝑟 − ∑ 𝐸𝑑𝑢𝑢 = 0 (2)

𝑟 𝑢

Where, 𝐸𝐺𝑟𝑟 is the energy production of the specific resource (wind, PV, diesel), 𝐸𝑆𝑔𝑠 is
the energy retrieved from the battery bank, 𝐸𝑆𝑠𝑠 , is the energy stored at the battery bank,
𝐸𝑑𝑢𝑢 , represents the electricity needs of the island users “u” and 𝐸𝑑𝑤𝑟𝑤𝑟 stands for the
electricity needs of the desalination plant. The hourly electricity requirements of the
desalination plant are estimated by utilizing commercialized desalination infrastructure
technical specifications and by considering monthly sea water temperature factors. The
water salinity is assumed equal to 39 psu. The water demand profile is estimated by
considering the annual needs and typical monthly factors of water consumption, as arisen
by historical data.
Optimisation of WSS in the water energy: An investement planning implementation 5

3. Results – Discussion
With the constraints of 100% energy and water demand fulfilment, and in search of the
optimal sizing in terms of nominal power of the ESCs, the aforementioned model has
been implemented. The most cost-efficient solution, in long term, with a great
environmental performance is presented at Table 3: a small-scale PV, a wind turbine, a
conventional power plant and an energy storage station have been selected in order to
cover the electricity needs, including the desalination plant’s load demand.
Table 3: Resuts in terms of Nominal Power (NP)nominal power of the energy SCs
NP of the Capacity of the
NP of the Diesel Power NP of the PV Park NP of the Desalination
Wind Farm Energy Storage
Plant (MW) (MW) (MW)
(MW) System (MWh)
0.35 0.81 0.4 0.5 0.06

The proposed solution satisfies the electricity needs through RES, by approx. 92%,
reducing the CO2 emissions from 1110 tn/y, a value that corresponds to 100% coverage
by a diesel-fired power plant, to 83 tn/y. The proposed solution requires a relative high
capital expenditure due to the RES investment incorporation (approx. 1.87 MEUROS),
however leads to the minimum possible present value of the total costs for a 25year
operation of the system.
For the selected ESCs, representative operational profiles are depicted in Figure 2, for a
set of typical days during the summer (August) period. As one may observe, under the
resulted reasonable energy ESCs sizing, energy demand is met, allowing the minimum
possible operation of the diesel power plant whilst also storing energy in days of RES
surplus.

Energy demand satisfaction for a typical 5-day profile in August

900000 600000
800000
700000
500000 Energy Storage Balnce (W)
600000 400000
Load (W)

500000
300000
400000
300000 200000
200000
100000
100000
0 0
5089 5109 5129 5149 5169 5189 5209

Edemand (W) Ed Desalination (W) PV production (W)

WIND Production (W) Diesel Production (W) Energy storage Balance (W)

Figure 2: ESCs operation during August

4. Conclusions
In this work an integrated framework for the optimisation of water and energy supply
systems is investigated through the model implementation in a small island in Cyclades.
This small island faces electrical power and water outages, especially during the summer
months, when the local population increases by approximately 500%. The
6 C. Papapostolou et al.

implementation of the proposed framework results in the most cost-efficient solution,

while it has a huge positive impact in the system’s environmental performance. More
specifically, model implementation results in the sizing of the RES- based desalination
configuration (desalination plant and the associated wind, PV and battery energy supply
system), of the diesel power station. In addition, it satisfies both the energy and water
demand profile of the island, all accounting economic and environmental considerations.
This is an interesting case study on its own, as well as compared to the current proposed-
by-the state water supply solution for the island which involves only a desalination plant
powered by a diesel station, with no provision for load-demand increase and relevant shut
downs that may occur during the touristic infusion of summer months. Especially when
in operation the environmental criteria, the selection of RES-based desalination plant is
grounded. The proposed framework may equally be applied to more complicated water
and energy SCs with different not only resources on the demand side but also more end
customers that need to be satisfied simultaneously.

References

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Daniel J. Garcia, Fengqi You, The water-energy-food nexus and process systems engineering: A
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Saeed Kaddoura, Sameh El Khatib, Review of water-energy-food Nexus tools to improve the
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