The Millennium drought created critical water shortages throughout Australia and particularly in South East Queensland (SEQ).
In response to this the bulk water network was significantly enhanced resulting in large infrastructure augmentations consisting of
cross regional pipelines, a desalination plant and a purified recycled water plant. Given that SEQ can transition from drought to
flood and vice versa in a short period of time it is a fine balance to operate the new more complicated asset base economically whilst
maintaining sufficient supply security. With rising energy prices and the increasing cost of living pressures, there is an immediate
need to better understand what optimal grid operation looks like and this is currently being investigated by the Seqwater Decision
Support System (DSS).
Till now, a network such as the SEQ water grid with its variety of water supply sources of varying reliabilities and complexity of
the network has been operated in a relatively manual manner using manual heuristics. Given the number of factors which need to
be considered when making decisions about which parts of the network to activate at any one time and the limitations of the human
mind to resolve these, means that sub optimal results are frequently generated.
The development of a DSS using optimization techniques can help determine the most efficient mode of delivery of water taking
into account the operating costs of the various assets within the network, amongst a range of other constraints. This paper goes
into detail the application of the optimization technology to the SEQ Water grid.