Method for Day-head Operations of a Large Hydropower Plant Considering Peak-shaving Demands of Multiple Provincial Power Grids

Abstract

Large hydropower plants in China are usually required to transmit power to multiple provinces and meet their complex peak-shaving demands. How to model and solve this problem is challenging. Based on a Hydropower Project in southwest China, this study proposed a method for day-head operations of large hydropower plant considering peak-shaving demands of two provincial power grids. A short-term peak-shaving model for multiple power grids is constructed, which takes the minimum sum of the squares of the remaining loads of each power grid. This model considers complex constraints such as the operation of hydropower plants and the requirements of power transmission. The multi-objective optimization is transformed into a single-objective problem and solved by a group search algorithm based on the genetic algorithm. Two cases which respectively consider different loads and objective weights are presented to test the model. It is found that the large hydropower plant can simultaneously respond to different peak loads for multiple power grids. It should be also noted that different objective weights may have a significant effect on peak-shaving results.