Water and energy management in an automated irrigation district

Abstract

An important modernization process providing pressurized irrigation systems to the traditional surface irrigation districts has taken place in Spain over the last 20 years However, an adverse consequence of modernization is the important increase in the energy cost in the modernized irrigation districts, which is aggravated by the current high energy prices. The Almudévar irrigation district (AID), a traditional surface irrigation district, was transformed into a pressurized sprinkler irrigation system in late 2010. The irrigation network was equipped with a high-level telemetry and remote control system that reaches the hydraulic valves of the irrigated blocks into which the plots are divided. Therefore, the telemetry system enables the centralized management of the irrigation scheduling from the district office. The district is divided into four independent networks with their own reservoirs and electric pump stations. A comparison of the land structure, crop patterns and irrigation management between the modernized AID in 2011 and the pre-modernization AID in 2006-2008 was performed. The temporal evolution of the irrigation water and energy demands in the 2011 irrigation season was analyzed with the available telemetry data from 2011. An irrigation performance index (SIPI) of the monthly and seasonal frequencies was computed for the main crops of the AID. Most irrigation events were performed during the low electricity tariff periods (P6 electric tariff) due to the centralized irrigation scheduling. Meteorological constraints had a low incidence in irrigation scheduling. Generally, a slight decrease in total irrigation deliveries was observed before and after medium-to-large precipitation events, but no changes in irrigation deliveries was observed with increases in wind speed. The exploitation of telemetry data in the AID has been an important tool to optimize the contracted electricity power in each tariff period and in decreasing the electric bill of the AID. This type of telemetry data analysis, similar to the analysis performed in the modernized AID in 2011, could be used in other water use associations as an important decision-making tool to improve water and energy management and to control the irrigation cost

Proposal for the Design of Monitoring and Operating Irrigation Networks Based on IoT, Cloud Computing and Free Hardware Technologies

“…In [13] the authors developed an application whose aim is to save costs in pumping stations by finding balances between the flow (the result of valve opening levels) and the pressure at different points of the system. For this purpose, the authors implemented contrasted heuristic models ([14,15,16]). In [17], a system aimed at saving energy in irrigation facilities by making real-time decisions based on data acquisition was designed through WSN.…”

Assessing telemetry and remote control systems for water users associations in Spain

“…Centralized irrigation management generalizes a systematic approach to irrigation scheduling and to water and energy efficiency, frees farmers from updating their irrigation controllers (farmers no longer need on-farm controllers), and can succeed in implementing complex schedules, such as regulated deficit irrigation or avoiding periods of high wind speed in sprinkler irrigation. Even when the WUA directly performs irrigation, the spatial variability in irrigation water application has been reported to remain high (Stambouli et al, 2014). Specific on-farm practices, such as fertigation, would be quite difficult to manage in a centralized way by the WUA.…”

“…These include optimizing water and energy efficiency (Rodríguez-Diaz et al, 2012;Tarjuelo et al, 2015;Zapata et al, 2017), automating irrigation scheduling at the WUA scale (Playán et al, 2013), or implementing regulated deficit irrigation (Ballester et al, 2014) in collective networks. In addition, TM/RC systems have also proven useful to analyze water use at the WUA and farmer levels with unprecedented detail (Lorite et al, 2013;Stambouli et al, 2014), as well as to forecast irrigation water demand in collective pressurized networks (Pulido-Calvo et al, 2007;González Perea et al, 2015).…”

Hydrosaline Balance in and Nitrogen Loads from an irrigation district before and after modernization

“…The works took place after a process of land consolidation to facilitate tillage and cropping operations: the existing land leveling was eliminated and some of the older open drainage lines were buried to increase crop area. This process resulted in a much lower number of plots of greater size (Jiménez-Aguirre, 2017; Stambouli et al, 2014). But, the installation of the buried irrigation lines affected the existing tile-drains, and some farmers have begun the installation of new tile-drains as needed in their plots after 2011 (Gómez-Lanuza, 2016).…”