Reaching economic leakage level through pressure management

Abstract

High non-revenue water (NRW) values as a percentage of system input volume form a serious problem that many water utilities worldwide have to confront nowadays. There are ways to mitigate the effect by adopting strategies with short- and long-term results. Water pressure management (PM) is one of the most efficient and effective NRW reduction strategies. To calculate pressure management of economic level of leakage (ELL), several steps have to be taken, such as full water costing, calculation of economic benefits and losses of PM interventions and definition of the related investment's break-even point. In this paper, the results of these three procedures required to define the ELL level are analyzed, in order to present the way they are linked together. The water distribution system of Kozani city (in Northern Greece) is used as the case study network. The results of both the net present values PM implementation results and the investment's break-even estimation are analyzed. © IWA Publishing 2016.