A Decision Support System for Short Term Hydropower Scheduling and Reservoir Management in a Competitive Market

Abstract

This paper introduces a fast, user-friendly decision support system that is currently used by the BC Hydro real-time operations engineers for short-term hydropower scheduling and reservoir management in a competitive energy market environment. The system consists of four major components: the Graphical User Interface (GUI) , the Communication Protocols, the Simulation model, and the Optimization model. The GUI is a user-friendly tool and a front end that allows the user to dynamically select a set of river systems and generating facilities to be included for simulation and optimization studies. It also allows the user to dynamically select one of several optimization objective functions, add or drop some of the model’s constraints and specify some of its user input parameters and limits. The simulation model is coded in C language that accurately simulates the planned reservoir operations and calculates some of the optimization model input parameters and limits. The optimization model is formulated as a large-scale linear programming algorithm and is solved using an advanced, commercially available algebraic modeling language and a linear programming package. The optimization model accurately represents the hydraulic and main environmental constraints of the modeled river systems. It also models the spot energy markets for Alberta and the Western U.S., and helps real-time operations engineers in setting the optimal spot energy sale schedules that maximize the value of the B.C. Hydro resources. The system is linked to other operational tools, and is configured to launch the GUI from a Windows-based personal computer client workstation, and to run the simulation and optimization models on a Windows NT server.