Abstract Renewable energy technologies around the world have become a priority today and among them, hydropower plants have the largest share. The most significant problem with small hydropower plants is the high cost of commercial turbines. The most economical way to generate small-scale energy is to use a pump as turbine (PAT) due to the cheapness and availability of the pump. In water distribution networks (WDNs), the PATs can be used instead of pressure reducing valves (PRVs) for both pressure reduction and energy production. The installed PAT must be capable of operating under different discharges due to fluctuations in rate of water consumption, which makes it challenging to select the appropriate pump. In this study, the process of PATs selection for PRVs replacement is optimized using particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Three different scenarios are performed for the optimization process, considering constant and variable speed PATs. It is worth mentioning that the wasted energy in the selected case study is about 494 kWh/day using PRVs. The results show, in scenario no. 3 (variable speed PATs), the total amount of produced energy is 182.15 kWh/day. Also, the penalty function is decreased by about 62% in comparison to other scenarios and as a result, the pressure of the critical nodes has better agreement to those values of PRVs utilization.

中文翻译：

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用于能量回收和压力管理的变速泵作为涡轮机（PAT）的选择优化

摘要 可再生能源技术已成为当今世界的重点，其中水力发电厂占有最大份额。小型水力发电厂最大的问题是商用涡轮机的高成本。由于泵的廉价和可用性，产生小规模能源的最经济方式是使用泵作为涡轮机 (PAT)。在配水网络 (WDN) 中，PAT 可代替减压阀 (PRV) 用于减压和能源生产。由于耗水率的波动，安装的 PAT 必须能够在不同的排放量下运行，这使得选择合适的泵具有挑战性。在本研究中，使用粒子群优化 (PSO) 算法优化了用于 PRV 替换的 PAT 选择过程。考虑到恒速和变速 PAT，优化过程执行了三种不同的场景。值得一提的是，在所选案例研究中，使用 PRV 浪费的能源约为 494 kWh/天。结果显示，在场景没有。3（变速PAT），产生的能量总量为182.15千瓦时/天。此外，与其他场景相比，惩罚函数降低了约 62%，因此，关键节点的压力与 PRV 利用率的值更吻合。