Abstract
Hydro-power plants are able to produce electrical energy in a sustainable way. A known format for producing energy is through generation scheduling, which is a task usually established as a Unit Commitment problem. The challenge in this process is to define the amount of energy that each turbine-generator needs to deliver to the plant, to fulfill the requested electrical dispatch commitment, while coping with the operational restrictions. An optimal generation scheduling for turbine-generators in hydro-power plants can offer a larger amount of energy to be generated with respect to non-optimized schedules, with significantly less water consumption. This work presents an efficient mathematical modelling for generation scheduling in a real hydro-power plant in Brazil. An optimization method based on different versions of the Coral Reefs Optimization algorithm with Substrate Layers (CRO) is proposed as an effective method to tackle this problem. This approach uses different search operators in a single population to refine the search for an optimal scheduling for this problem. We have shown that the solution obtained with the CRO using Gaussian search in exploration is able to produce competitive solutions in terms of energy production. The results obtained show a huge savings of 13.98 billion (liters of water) monthly projected versus the non-optimized scheduling.
Highlights
Obtaining the optimal generation scheduling in a Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) is a challenging problem, with direct implications in the plant’s energy production performance and in the amount of water consumed in the generation process
Generation scheduling is a kind of Unit Commitment (UC) problem [1], i.e., a family of mathematical optimization problems in the electric energy generation, where the production of a set of turbinegenerators is somehow managed to achieve a common target, in this case particularized for HPPs
We show its excellent performance in a real problem, which is considered the generation scheduling of an HPP energy producing in Brazil
Summary
Obtaining the optimal generation scheduling in a Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) is a challenging problem, with direct implications in the plant’s energy production performance and in the amount of water consumed in the generation process. The hydro-power plant is composed of turbine-generator units in which each unit needs to deliver part of the total demand dispatched. In this sense, the objective to be achieved is to find the amount of efficient energy that each turbine-generator must generate (in MW) for the system. The general goal is minimizing the costs and the usage of water resources, whether fulfilling of power demand and respecting the restrictions [3]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
