Apparent losses caused by meters inaccuracies can be reduced by analysing meters performance in the water supply and identifying the main causes of inaccuracies. These can have its origin on the meters design and accuracy curves, users' consumption patterns, or specific characteristics of the water supply system.
16 17The relationship between water and energy in water distribution systems (WDS) has been a 18 growing concern among energy and water experts. Among the different strategies to improve 19 water-energy efficiency in water distribution networks, energy audits are of paramount 20 importance as they quantify water flow requirements, the amount of energy consumed to meet 21 demand and leakage and friction losses. Previous work has presented the energy audit process 22for urban WDS and this energy audit is extended to irrigation networks here. This work 23 analyses the most common types of irrigation emitters (sprinklers and pressure compensating 24 and non-pressure compensating drippers), hydrant specifications, irrigation management 25 *Manuscript Click here to view linked References systems (on-demand or rigid scheduled), and energy losses due to friction in pipes, control 26 valves and irrigation hydrants. The energy audit does not assess whether management of the 27 network is optimal, but analyses the energy consumption. Some of the performance indicators 28 have already been defined for agricultural water networks, some are identical to those of urban 29 WDS, but in addition, a new one is presented that disaggregates the energy dissipated into three 30 terms, energy losses in pipelines, in hydraulic valves and in irrigation hydrants. These indicators 31show information necessary to better understand the performance of the irrigation network 32 under study, to carry out a deep analysis of energy consumption and to allow for comparison 33 with similar systems. The paper presents the analysis of a real case study conducted on the 34 irrigation network of the garden of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. 35 36
7Water meter measuring errors vary depending on the water flow rate. Therefore, the 8 discrepancy between the amount of water actually consumed and the volume registered by a 9 meter will differ depending on how water consumption is distributed by flow rates.
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