Author(s): Beatriz Sepulveda Pires; Alberto Luiz Francato

Linked Author(s):

Keywords: Water optimization; Energy planning; Reservoir drawdown

Abstract: The implementation of flow regulation using the plant's reservoir is to optimize the use of water for the plants and users of the basin as a whole. Therefore, this work had as a proposal to elaborate the study of flow regulation of two Small Hydroelectric Power Plants (SHP) that operate in cascade on the Chapeco River, Santa Catarina - Brazil. An operational rule of reduction of up to 01 (one) meter of variation for the upstream plant and 0.7 meter for the plant located downstream was proposed, thus allowing the expansion of the flow regulation capacity by the plants. For the evaluation, historical flow data were used and with the use of excel software, the water balance of the reservoir was calculated, comparing the values resulting from the current operating rule and the proposed operating rule. It was projected in the study, for independent scenarios, that the number of occurrences of outflows poured into the SHPP will correspond to 84% of the current value and for the downstream SHPP will be 85% of the current value, with these flows being used for generation, in addition to if the increase in the value of the minimum effluent flow, which can increase these flows by up to 10% of the operating time, another important factor is that the lowering of both plants in cascade presented a greater increase in generation than when evaluating the independent plants.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/978-90-833476-1-5_iahr40wc-p0893-cd

Year: 2023