Multi-objective short-term tandem hydro scheduling: MINLP approach

This paper presents model for multi objective short term hydro scheduling for hydro power. The objective is to find practically feasible hourly generation schedules for operation of cascaded hydro plants of a medium size hydroelectric company (H-Genco) in day ahead manner. The challenge for H-GENCO is to change its hydro scheduling strategy frequently to meet the different objective functions on different plant operation scenarios. The objective functions considered in the paper are maximization of profit, maximization of energy, follow the load pattern, minimization of spillage from reservoirs. At same time it should be ensured that all operational and technical, grid constraints and should be met. This robust model takes into account all the possible operational, environmental and technical constraints related to machine and other details of generation units. Model is formed and solved as a MINLP optimization problem. The problem is classical, dynamic large-scale nonlinear optimization. The proposed model is implemented on sample cascaded reservoir systems comprising of four hydro generation units.