Author(s): Hans Ivar Skjelbred, Jiehong Kong

Linked Author(s):

Keywords: Hydraulic simulation; Short-term hydropower scheduling; Power system modeling;

Abstract: The goal of short-term hydropower scheduling is to find optimal production plans that can be used to operate real-world cascaded watercourses in an efficient way. In Northern and Central Europe, many of these watercourses include complex, pressurized tunnel systems between multiple reservoirs and hydropower plants. Determining the feasibility of a production plan in such systems is a fundamental challenge for hydropower producers. In this paper we propose a new simulation method aimed at solving this task. It is currently in operational use by the largest hydropower producer in Norway. The first part of the paper explains the basic principles, on which the method is founded. A set of numerical test cases is constructed to highlight the most prominent features of the simulation algorithm. Results are compared to more traditional simulation methods, and demonstrate superiority of the proposed simulation method in terms of both precision and calculation time. Suggestions are given for new areas of application and potential enhancements of the method.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/38WC092019-1575

Year: 2019