A monthly hydropower scheduling of cascaded reservoirs based on a three-triangle linear concaving method

Abstract

Hydropower is one of the most critical renewable energy resources in reducing carbon emissions and alleviating global warming. The energy production efficiency can be improved with hydropower scheduling, which, however, is a challenging optimization problem mainly attributable to the nonlinear and nonconvex hydropower output function (HOF). This work applies a new method to linearly concave the nonlinear HOF without introducing any integer variables, ensuring a very fast solution to a long-term hydropower scheduling of cascaded reservoirs. The Lancang River, which involves four cascaded reservoirs, is studied with the model and method, which takes only 34 seconds to secure the optimum monthly hydropower scheduling over five years.