Impact of rainfall events on the electricity consumption of two wastewater treatment plants

Focus on the Energy/Water Nexus has led to interest and increased research activity into the relationship between water and society and understanding the energy requirement of Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) will be a key part of future development. Using wastewater treatment plant data the aim of this paper is to study the relationship between the energy requirements for Wastewater Treatment (WWT), with particular focus on the impact of Wet Weather Flows (WWFs). It has been established from the literature that the efficiency of treatment plant processes drops during these events and, should treatment works be subject to increased energy requirements during WWFs, this will have an impact on any benchmarking effort. Using linear regression, a potential link between increased flows to treatment and electricity consumption of one WWTP in Northern Ireland has been shown, while a second possible link is established between the catchment area rainfall and increased flows to treatment for two WWTPs, which was found to be consistent with previous work in the literature