Optimal short term scheduling of cascaded hydroelectric chain plants with pumped-storage units

In this paper, the short-term scheduling of cascaded hydroelectric chain plants with pumped-storage units is considered. Some integer variables are carefully introduced such that the original problem is successfully formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming. The model given in this paper admits of many complex characteristics such as nonlinear hydroelectric production function, minimum/maximum down/up time of hydro units, existence of pumped-units and time delay between plants, etc. CPLEX package is adopted to solve the problem. Numerical testing is also performed for a system with 3 cascaded reservoir, 12 hydro units and a pumped-storage plant with 5 pumped-units. The results suggest that the mixed-integer programming model given in this paper is very effective.