Laboratory Testing of Resilience Effects of Water Microgrids for Sustainable Water Supply

Traditional centralized water systems are facing sustainability challenges due to climate and socioeconomic changes, extreme weather events, and aging infrastructure and their uncertainties. The energy sector has addressed similar challenges using the microgrid approach, which involves decentralized energy sources and their supply, improving system resilience and sustainable energy supply. This study investigated the resilience effects of water microgrids, which feature operational interactions between centralized and local systems for sustainable water supply. A lab-scale water distribution model was tested to demonstrate centralized, decentralized, and microgrid water systems under the disruption scenarios of pump shutdown, pump rate manipulation, and pipe leaks/bursts. The water microgrids integrate centralized and local systems’ operations, while the decentralized system operates independently. Then, functionality-based resilience and its attributes were evaluated for each disruption scenario. The results reveal that, overall, the microgrid configuration, with increased water supply redundancy and flexible operational adjustment based on system conditions, showed higher resilience, robustness, and recovery rate and a lower loss rate across disruption scenarios. The resilience effect of water microgrids was more evident with longer and more severe disruptions. Considering global challenges in water security under climate and socioeconomic changes, the findings suggest insights into a hybrid water system as a strategy to enhance resilience and water use efficiency and provide adaptive operations for sustainable water supply.