Challenges in the Management of Hydroelectric Generation in Power System Operations

Abstract

The management of hydroelectric generation in the context of power system operations has been a difficult and important problem since the inception of power systems more than a century ago; however, various current developments are leading to important new associated challenges and opportunities: massive integration of variable renewable energy and other disruptive technologies, climate change effects on the availability of hydro inflows, and also new efficient techniques for optimization under uncertainty. Multistage stochastic optimization and stochastic dual dynamic programming are currently the dominant techniques for hydroelectric generation scheduling problems; however, there are many recent extensions and improvements on such techniques, and alternative approaches are being developed with significant potential for future concrete applications from power system operators and policy makers. In this context, this paper presents a literature review on hydroelectric generation scheduling models, and a discussion on the critical challenges, open research questions, and future lines of research associated to this problem.