Preliminary assessment of the hydropower potential in urban water networks

The use of small-scale hydropower in water supply system is an emerging and very profiting technology that is topic of active research in the last years all over the world. These types of installations are characterized by an installed power lower than 100 kW, using small heads or small flow discharges. Due to these reasons, they can be used as a decentralized source to satisfy local demand for electricity (Almeida Samoira, 2016). The interest in mini hydropower has increased considerably in the last decades since this can be considered a ‘green’ solution with very low environmental impacts, able to meet the climate policies and environmental agreements recently stipulated by the European Union. Moreover, it can be set in already built and existing environments, leading to bigger public acceptance and to reduced costs. The aim of this work is to understand and estimate a preliminary assessment of the hydropower potential that is present in a water supply system and, more specifically, with the focus on the real case study of the water distribution system of the province of Liège in Belgium, owned by the CILE (Compagnie Intercommunale Liégeoise des Eaux) utility. The study is divided into two main parts; the first one is the analysis of the entire available datasets (constituted by GIS, topographic and telemetric information) and the study of characterization of the entire water distribution network. The second part consists of the passage from the general datasets, to the particular and specific identification of optimal locations in the network for the installation of the small-scale hydropower systems. After the evaluation of the system, two optimal locations are analysed as potential location for the plants, according to the most favourable hydraulic characteristics of the site, the best topographic conformations and the real opportunity of installation in the network.A guidance for the selection of the optimal locations in an urban water network is developed.