Transient Pressure Monitoring Program — Nacimiento Water Project

The Nacimiento Water Project under construction in San Luis Obispo County, California, will deliver 15,750 acre-feet of raw water annually from Lake Nacimiento through 45 miles of pipeline to its service area. The Project includes three pumping stations, three storage tanks, 45 miles of pipeline ranging from 36- to 12- inches in diameter, and a SCADA system. The hydraulic aspects of the system dictated careful attention to hydraulic design, with due consideration of normal and transient pressures. As a follow-up to the hydraulic design, the project will include a very rigorous transient monitoring program, possibly the most intensive on any pipeline in the USA to-date. This transient monitoring program scheduled for installation in March 2010 includes nine TP-1 transient monitoring systems installed at locations most prone to severe hydraulic transients. These systems provide detailed information regarding transient pressures and are integrated into the SCADA system to provide real-time alerts if threshold pressures are exceeded. This paper describes the Nacimiento Water Project, the hydraulic design considerations, the network of transient monitoring systems that is installed, and the results of transient pressure monitoring collected to-date.