Has anyone tuned VFD setpoints off DMA night flow to shave pressure without tripping low-service alarms? I’m piloting a 30 kPa overnight setpoint drop in a 12,000-connection zone using EPANET with PRVs, and I’d love benchmarks on leakage reduction vs. customer feedback before I push it to the PLC next month.
Add a remote ‘critical point’ sensor; ramp the 30 kPa drop over 45 min. Watch discolored-water calls, @OP.
We ran a 25–35 kPa night drop in an 11k-connection DMA; MNF fell about 9–11% and complaints were nil once we rate-limited the VFD PID to about 0.3 kPa/s and held a 22 m min head at the highest node in EPANET. PRVs fighting the pumps drives me nuts, so we put them in flow-mod mode at night and offset downstream setpoints by 5–8 kPa before pushing to the PLC. What’s your current minimum node head, @OP?