Pumping Plant Operation and Maintenance Costs

Procedures for preliminary estimates of annual operation and maintenance (O and M) costs of pumping plants through 15,000 hp have been developed from studies of 174 installations. They cover direct O and M costs for pumps, motors, accessory electric equipment, miscellaneous equipment, and plant structures. Intake channel, discharge line, substation, powerline, and certain replacement costs, as well as general administrative expenses, should be estimated separately. Operation and maintenance costs are considered separately. Factors affecting operation costs are degree of attendance, plant size, and operating season length. Maintenance costs depend on plant size, annual volume of water pumped, and plant age. These plant size groups were used: (1) 5 hp to 149 hp, (2) 150 hp to 6,999 hp, and (3) 7,000 hp to 15,000 hp. Maintenance costs for Group 1 are so affected by plant size that other factors are not important, but for Groups 2 and 3, the annual volume of water pimped is significant. To eliminate plant age factor, a 17-yr age representing average maintenance costs was substituted in the equations. Nomographs are included to simplify solutions of estimating equations.