Bentley water demand analysis software allows Sabesp – Companhia de Saneamento Básico do Estado de São Paulo – to better project system needs.
By Christine Byrne
O Serving the state of São Paulo, Brazil, and one of the world’s largest water utilities, Sabesp has developed a real–time decision system by interfacing WaterCAD design software from Bentley Systems Inc. with a demand prediction model.
The utility’s vast infrastructure of 2,023 reservoirs, 197 potable water treatment stations and 35,000 miles of water distribution networks benefit more than 25 million Brazilians in 367 cities including São Paulo, the largest city in the southern hemisphere.
Sabesp is used to big numbers, but a monthly electricity bill of $7 million was just not acceptable, so a multi–phase project was implemented to develop a methodological evolution of a real–time water distribution system operation.
A real–time hourly demand forecast model was first created to predict water consumption up to an interval of six hours ahead, with the intention of increasing operational performance. Several manual and automatic operational control procedures of the water distribution system were analyzed.
During the second phase, Bentley’s WaterObjects technology – which incorporates an extensive modeling object library – was used to create an interface between Sabesp’s WaterCAD hydraulic model and the water demand prediction model allowing both systems to share real–time operational data obtained by a telemetric system. The interface was implemented as a case study in the metropolitan area of São Paulo.
