Municipal water supply systems account for the highest share of total electricity consumption out of the other energy-intensive municipal services such as wastewater pumping, treatment, and street lighting. The energy-efficiency in the sector has majorly been looked in terms of design and operational efficiency. The interaction with the urban form is quite unexplored. With the increase in urbanization, expansion of cities and densification are leading to a burden on existing infrastructure and an urgent need for additional basic infrastructural facilities is being felt. The study aims to explore the relationship between the urban form of a city and electricity consumption for the municipal water distribution systems. The study focuses on the city of Ahmedabad. The urban form of a city corresponds to urban development parameters such as the spatial distribution of water users, net plot density, network length, and population density. The pumping electricity consumption in the study has been divided into two parts - municipal level and building level (as the municipalities in India supplies water for a certain head pressure).
Correlation analysis was used to find the kind of relationship that exists and its significance. The value of correlation coefficient obtained at city level showed a strong positive relationship between the pumping electricity consumption and network length configuration (r= +0.633) while a very weak relationship with the population density (r= 0.098). Municipal level pumping electricity consumption doesn’t decrease much with the increase in density. However, the building level pumping electricity consumption showed a usual trend with the highest electricity consumption in bungalow societies, high rise apartments (>5 floors) followed by mid-rise apartments (3-5 floors) and the least in the row housing. The findings of the study at both, municipal level and building level pumping electricity consumption pave the way forward for shaping Ahmedabad's future urbanization in an energy-sensitive manner.