Collaborative Research: Planning for Uncertainty in Coupled Water-Power Distribution Networks

The goal of this project is to develop approaches for the joint operation of coupled municipal drinking water and electric power distribution networks at the physical scale of neighborhoods or cities. Electricity-consuming water network equipment such as water pumps can provide flexibility to electricity networks by shifting pumping load. Flexibility provided by the water network to the power network increases power network reliability, in turn increasing water network reliability. Further, increased flexibility in power network operation reduces operational costs and can help electric power distribution network incorporate higher penetrations of renewable energy resources. The project will develop operational planning and real-time control strategies for coupled water-power networks under uncertainty, develop economic contracts for flexibility, assess network resilience to new operational/control strategies and economic mechanisms, and update these new approaches to maintain or improve upon current levels of resilience. This research will help improve the economics, environmental impact, reliability, and resilience of coupled water-power systems. Further, the research will have practical impacts through collaboration with electric and water utility partners. The team will disseminate their results to the research community and practitioners, develop curriculum materials, and provide multidisciplinary research experiences for underrepresented graduate and undergraduate students. The project will contribute to the fields of optimization, economic contract design, resilience modeling, electric power systems, and water networks. Task 1 will develop approaches for advancing the state-of-the-art in coupled water-power network modeling and solving the challenging stochastic optimization problems that arise in the coupled operation of the two networks. Task 2 will develop approaches to design economic contracts to ensure coordination of the water and electric companies and incentivization of the customers. Task 3 will advance the modeling and analysis of equity in who faces infrastructure vulnerability from hazards. While previous work developed a general framework for measuring inequity in the loss of essential services across a population, this has not been integrated with detailed infrastructure performance models. This project will make this critical linkage, advancing the ability to consider potential inequities in vulnerability that may inadvertently arise from interventions intended to improve system performance. This is critical to avoid having negative, unintended consequences on vulnerable sub-populations. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.