HR: 15:25h
AN: H23L-08    [Abstracts]
TI: Using Water Transfers to Manage Supply Risk
AU: * Characklis, G W
EM: charack@email.unc.edu
AF: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dept. of Environmental Sciences and Engineering Rosenau Hall, CB#7431, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7431,
AB: Most cities currently rely on water supplies with sufficient capacity to meet demand under almost all conditions. However, the rising costs of water supply development make the maintenance of infrequently used excess capacity increasingly expensive, and more utilities are considering the use of water transfers as a means of more cost effectively meeting demand under drought conditions. Transfers can take place between utilities, as well as different user groups (e.g., municipal and agricultural), and can involve both treated and untreated water. In cases where both the "buyer" and "seller" draw water from the same supply, contractual agreements alone can facilitate a transfer, but in other cases new infrastructure (e.g., pipelines) will be required. Developing and valuing transfer agreements and/or infrastructure investments requires probabilistic supply/demand analyses that incorporate elements of both hydrology and economics. The complexity of these analyses increases as more sophisticated types of agreements (e. g., options) are considered, and as utilities begin to consider how to integrate transfers into long-term planning efforts involving a more diversified portfolio of supply assets. This discussion will revolve around the methods used to develop minimum (expected) cost portfolios of supply assets that meet specified reliability goals. Two different case studies, one in both the eastern and western U.S., will be described with attention to: the role that transfers can play in reducing average supply costs; tradeoffs between costs and supply reliability, and; the effects of different transfer agreement types on the infrastructure capacity required to complete the transfers. Results will provide insights into the cost savings potential of more flexible water supply strategies.
DE: 1880 Water management (6334)
DE: 6334 Regional planning (1880)
DE: 6344 System operation and management
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting