A Quadratic Programming Approach for Fixed Head Hydropower System Operation Optimization Considering Power Shortage Aspect

Abstract

As an important renewable energy resource, hydropower plays an irreplaceable role in reducing power shortages in modern electrical systems throughout the world. This study focuses on the fixed head hydropower operation problem considering power shortages, which is classified as a large-scale nonlinear constrained optimization problem with a set of complex operational constraints. In order to efficiently solve this problem, a novel quadratic programming (QP) model is developed, in which the goal is to find the optimal hourly operational policy for all hydropower plants in a system so as to minimize the sum of squared energy deficits over the scheduling horizon. The results of a ten-reservoir hydropower system show that the proposed approach can efficiently find better solutions than several previous optimization methods for energy deficit reduction. Thus the proposed technique is effective for hydropower scheduling problems in which the assumption of fixed hydraulic head holds.