A Reservoir Operation Policy Using Inter-Basin Water Transfer for Maximizing Hydroelectric Benefits in Brazil

Abstract

The Hydrothermal Coordination problem consists of determining an operation policy for hydroelectric and thermoelectric plants within a given planning horizon. In systems with a predominance of hydraulic generation, the operation policy to be adopted should specify the operation of hydroelectric plants, so that hydroelectric resources are used economically and reliably. This work proposes the implementation of reservoir operation rules, using inter-basin water transfer through an optimization model based on Network Flow and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The proposed algorithm aims to obtain an optimized operation policy of power generation reservoirs and consequently to maximize the hydroelectric benefits of the hydrothermal generation system, to reduce the use of thermoelectric plants, the importation and/or energy deficit and to reduce the cost associated with meeting the demand and reduce CO2 emissions from combustion of fossil fuels used by thermoelectric plants. In order to illustrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed approach, it was evaluated by optimizing two case studies using a system with four hydroelectric plants. The first case study does not consider transfer and water and the second case study uses water transfer between rivers. The obtained results illustrate that the proposed model allowed to maximize the hydroelectric resources of a hydrothermal generation system with economy and reliability.

Optimizing Parallel Pumping Station Operations in an Open-Channel Water Transfer System Using an Efficient Hybrid Algorithm

“…At the end of each iteration, all particles observe the objective function value and move toward better positions. The velocity and position of each particle j in iteration t + 1 can be computed as follows [23][24][25]:…”

Spillage Forecast Models in Hydroelectric Power Plants Using Information from Telemetry Stations and Hydraulic Control

“…Abritta et al [7] performed the short-term optimization of HPP considering the indication of spillage by the optimizer. The meta-heuristic particle swarm optimization and network flow are used in [8] to obtain the optimal solution for reservoir operation rules, through water transfer between basins.…”

Hydroelectric Operation Optimization and Unexpected Spillage Indications

“…The former usually includes several energy sources simultaneously and does not implement detailed characteristics of these sources. As losses of accuracy cause an immediate decrease in performance, the day-ahead operation requires high levels of detail, as in [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. These papers consider several hydroelectric operation aspects, such as head dependency when calculating efficiency, reservoir and downstream basin levels variation, and penstock power losses.…”

“…These papers consider several hydroelectric operation aspects, such as head dependency when calculating efficiency, reservoir and downstream basin levels variation, and penstock power losses. Within this context, several papers exposing researches on the very short-term operation of hydroelectric power plants (HPPs) consider spillage as a decision variable, as in [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. In these works, determining how much reservoir water should be spilled (if any) becomes part of the optimization problem.…”

“…The authors reported that overall better performance was obtained by the LR approach. Passos de Aragão et al [10] proposed a model including water transfer among basins. Network Flow and Particle Swarm Optimization algorithms were applied to solve the problem, which considers a hydrothermal system.…”