Drinking-water supply for Kuala Lumpur and Selangor
Part one:
SYABAS is a private company holding the concession for the water supply for the state of
Selangor in Malaysia, where the capitol Kuala Lumpur is situated. The area is also called
Klang Valley. Klang Valley has approximately 3.5 million inhabitants. All of Selangor has
approximately 6.5 – 7.0 millions inhabitants.
In SYABAS, as in many other large cities, loss from the network is a vast problem. Knowledge of lay-out and operation of the network is
insufficient and the state of the system is poor. Approximately 35 % of the produced water disappears before reaching the consumers.
This means that every single day 1.2 million m3 of drinking water – enough to supply a small town for 1 year - is lost. Water is retrieved,
processed and pumped out into the system, and then disappears into the ground. The amount of lost water in SYABAS represents all of
Denmark’s water usage.
So, there is room for improvement. The goal is to halve this loss over a seven year period. This will be done by dividing the distribution
network into 1,000 sections, of which 380 will be planned and designed this year (2007). Malaysia experiences a significant shortage of
water and has a need for mayor extensions of the water supply system. It therefore makes good sense and a very speedy payback time
to invest in a better drinking water distribution, utilizing the water already available.
Detailed AQUIS models of the network (reticulation system) to support and verify the establishment of approximately 600 DMZ’s
(Demand Meter Zone = Pressure zone) will be set up within the next two years, with the clear goal of reducing Non Revenue Water
significantly.
Part two:
SYABAS – Upgrades to Real-Time
SYABAS is the concessionaire for water distribution services in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and the
federal state of Selangor in Malaysia. The company has recently purchased the full package of
AQUIS Off-line and AQUIS Real-time software, which is to be implemented state wide.
SYABAS has consequently established a Hydraulic Modeling department with a staff of 10 to work full time with hydraulic
modeling. The trunk main system will be running real-time to be monitored and operated from the operator room side by
side with the future SCADA system.
Meanwhile, detailed and strategic models of the reticulation system for the 10 districts are being built. This work is being
done in order to curb the Non Revenue Water (NRW), which is currently at about 32%. The goal is to bring the NRW down
below 15% by 2013.
Furthermore, the models are being used to generate an overview of the hydraulics as well as the water quality of the
entire distribution system. Having a total of 24,000 km pipelines and about 1,000 reservoirs it is only possible to gain the
full overview by using AQUIS . The models will help SYABAS to plan for future developments and pipe replacement
projects in the rapidly growing urban and rural areas of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Selangor.