Seasonal multi-year optimal management of quantities and salinities in regional water supply systems

A seasonal multi-year model for management of water quantities and salinities in regional water supply systems (WSS) was developed and implemented. Water is taken from sources which include aquifers, reservoirs, and desalination plants, and conveyed through a distribution system to consumers who require quantities of water under salinity constraints. The year is partitioned into seasons, and the operation is subject to technological, administrative, and environmental constraints such as water levels and salinities in the aquifers, capacities of the pumping, distribution system, and the desalination plants, and the desalination plants maximum removal ratios. The objective is to operate the system at minimum total cost. The objective function and some of the constraints are nonlinear, leading to a nonlinear optimization problem. The nonlinear optimization problem is solved efficiently by adapting (1) a set of manipulations that reduce the problem size and (2) a novel finite difference scheme for calculating the derivatives required by the optimization solver, entitled the Time-Chained-Method (TCM). The model is demonstrated on a small illustrative example and on a real sized regional water supply system in Israel.