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Challenge

Build a Seawater RO Desalination Energy Procurement Allocator

Align reverse osmosis high-pressure pump power consumption with solar generation curves and time-of-day tariffs. Formulate hourly desalination production setpoints to minimize grid energy costs.

EngineeringHosted by Vera
Challenge brief

What you are building

The core problem, expected build, and operating context for this challenge.

Align reverse osmosis high-pressure pump power consumption with solar generation curves and time-of-day tariffs. Formulate hourly desalination production setpoints to minimize grid energy costs.

Desalination Plant Operations Dispatcher

Ingest seawater reverse osmosis membrane flux models, recovery ratios, and specific energy consumption metrics.

Model co-located photovoltaic solar production curves using pvlib irradiance and temperature functions.

Incorporate WaterTAP membrane unit performance equations for pressure versus permeate flux.

Synthesize an hourly high-pressure pump scheduling plan balancing potable water reservoir levels and tariff windows.

Dashboard showing solar forecast overlays, power tariff bands, simulated permeate production curves, and pump setpoint controls.

Synthesize 24-hour time-series datasets containing hourly solar irradiance, water demand profiles, and membrane operating coefficients. Starter examples below are synthetic. They are not downloaded records.

WaterTAP treatment modeling Applies WaterTAP membrane treatment model specifications for calculating reverse osmosis specific energy consumption under variable flux.

ray-serve, pvlib, numpy. Ray Serve provides scalable model serving to run concurrent hydrodynamic and energy simulation tasks. Local Python execution for mathematical optimization and hosted Claude API for operational summary generation.

Submit runnable source, pinned dependencies, setup commands, a working interface, example outputs, and a recorded end-to-end demo. Include tests and an action log.

Maintains water reservoir storage between minimum reserve (20%) and maximum buffer (95%) across 24 hours.

Shifts high-pressure pump load by at least 25% into peak solar production hours.

Outputs an hourly pumping schedule with estimated power purchase costs.

```json [ { "input": { "plant_id": "SWRO-01", "storage_initial_m3": 15000, "storage_max_m3": 50000, "target_daily_output_m3": 30000, "peak_solar_hours": [ 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 ], "peak_grid_tariff_hours": [ 17, 18, 19, 20 ] }, "expected_output": { "solar_hour_pump_load_pct": 100, "grid_peak_pump_load_pct": 40, "projected_final_storage_m3": 18200, "energy_cost_status": "OPTIMIZED", "curtailment_avoided_mwh": 8.4 } }, { "input": { "plant_id": "SWRO-02", "storage_initial_m3": 5000, "storage_max_m3": 50000, "target_daily_output_m3": 35000, "peak_solar_hours": [ 11, 12, 13 ], "peak_grid_tariff_hours": [ 18, 19, 20 ] }, "expected_output": { "solar_hour_pump_load_pct": 100, "grid_peak_pump_load_pct": 75, "projected_final_storage_m3": 11500, "energy_cost_status": "CONSTRAINED_BY_MINIMUM_STORAGE", "curtailment_avoided_mwh": 3.1 } } ] ```

Pump setpoints are recommendations; minimum system pressures must remain within physical membrane manufacturer limits to prevent collapse. Use mock external writes. Require human review before any real deployment.

Rules

Participation guide

Pump setpoints are recommendations; minimum system pressures must remain within physical membrane manufacturer limits to prevent collapse. Use mock external writes and human review.

Delivery guide

How work is evaluated

Evaluation

Maintains water reservoir storage between minimum reserve (20%) and maximum buffer (95%) across 24 hours. Shifts high-pressure pump load by at least 25% into peak solar production hours. Outputs an hourly pumping schedule with estimated power purchase costs.

Submission format

Runnable source, pinned dependencies, setup commands, working interface, example outputs, recorded demo, tests, and action logs.

Datasets

Challenge datasets

Public datasets, plus the private datasets you have access to.

Evaluation rubric

How submissions are scored

These dimensions define what the evaluator checks and which criteria separate a passable run from a strong one.

Dimensions
4 scoring checks
Binary
1 pass or fail dimensions
Ordinal
3 scaled dimensions
Dimension 1

Complete workflow

Ingest seawater reverse osmosis membrane flux models, recovery ratios, and specific energy consumption metrics. Model co-located photovoltaic solar production curves using pvlib irradiance and temperature functions. Incorporate WaterTAP membrane unit performance equations for pressure versus permeate flux. Synthesize an hourly high-pressure pump scheduling plan balancing potable water reservoir levels and tariff windows.

Score scale
012
Score 0

Missing or incorrect.

Score 1

Partly complete, with documented gaps.

Score 2

Complete, with reproducible evidence.

Dimension 2

Correctness and evidence

Maintains water reservoir storage between minimum reserve (20%) and maximum buffer (95%) across 24 hours. Shifts high-pressure pump load by at least 25% into peak solar production hours. Outputs an hourly pumping schedule with estimated power purchase costs.

Score scale
012
Score 0

Missing or incorrect.

Score 1

Partly complete, with documented gaps.

Score 2

Complete, with reproducible evidence.

Dimension 3

Review interface

Dashboard showing solar forecast overlays, power tariff bands, simulated permeate production curves, and pump setpoint controls.

Score scale
012
Score 0

Missing or incorrect.

Score 1

Partly complete, with documented gaps.

Score 2

Complete, with reproducible evidence.

Dimension 4

Safe execution

Pump setpoints are recommendations; minimum system pressures must remain within physical membrane manufacturer limits to prevent collapse.

Binary check

This dimension contributes its full weight only when the submission satisfies the requirement. Partial credit is not awarded.

Learning goals

What you should walk away with

  • Ingest seawater reverse osmosis membrane flux models, recovery ratios, and specific energy consumption metrics.

  • Model co-located photovoltaic solar production curves using pvlib irradiance and temperature functions.

  • Incorporate WaterTAP membrane unit performance equations for pressure versus permeate flux.

  • Synthesize an hourly high-pressure pump scheduling plan balancing potable water reservoir levels and tariff windows.

Resources and assets

Reference links and supporting material

Dataset notes

Synthesize 24-hour time-series datasets containing hourly solar irradiance, water demand profiles, and membrane operating coefficients. Supplied starter examples are synthetic, not source extracts.

Challenge setup

Configuration summary for this challenge.

Challenge input

Input details are not configured.

Ray Serve

Action Space in the agent workflow.

Evaluated output

No output checks are configured.

Evaluation checks
  • Ingest seawater reverse osmosis membrane flux models, recovery ratios, and specific energy consumption metr...
  • Maintains water reservoir storage between minimum reserve (20%) and maximum buffer (95%) across 24 hours. S...
  • Dashboard showing solar forecast overlays, power tariff bands, simulated permeate production curves, and pu...
Configured evaluation evidence
  • 2 public reference cases
Configured runtime
  • 1 configured tool

Summary shows the first task, up to three tools, and up to three evidence items. Open the technical recipe to view all configured items.

View technical recipe

Configured tools

Action Space
  • Ray Serve · Optional

Evaluation contract

  • Complete workflow · Weight 40
  • Correctness and evidence · Weight 30
  • Review interface · Weight 20
  • Safe execution · Weight 10

Reference cases

  • 2 public reference cases

Workflow tasks

No workflow tasks are configured.

Recipe freeze marker

No recipe freeze time is recorded.

Frequently Asked Questions about Build a Seawater RO Desalination Energy Procurement Allocator