Two-layer scheduling scheme for pump stations

In this paper, a two-layer scheduling scheme for pump stations in a water distribution network has been proposed. The upper layer, which works in one-hour sampling time, uses Model Predictive Control (MPC) to produce continuous flow set-points for the lower layer. While in the lower layer, a scheduling algorithm has been used to translate the continuous flow set-points to a discrete (ON-OFF) control operation sequence of the pump stations with the constraints that pump stations should draw the same amount of water as the continuous flow set-points provided by the upper layer. The tuning parameters of such algorithm are the lower layer control sampling period and the number of parallel pumps in the pump station. The proposed method has been tested in the Richmond case study.