Hydropower Scheduling Toolchains: Comparing Experiences in Brazil, Norway, and USA and Implications for Synergistic Research

Abstract

While hydropower scheduling is a well-defined problem, there are institutional differences that need to be identified to promote constructive and synergistic research. We study how established toolchains of computer models are organized to assist operational hydropower scheduling in Brazil, Norway, and the United States’ Colorado River System (CRS). These three systems have vast hydropower resources, with numerous, geographically widespread, and complex reservoir systems. Although the underlying objective of hydropower scheduling is essentially the same, the systems are operated in different market contexts and with different alternative uses of water, where the stakeholders’ objectives clearly differ. This in turn leads to different approaches when it comes to the scope, organization, and use of models for operational hydropower scheduling and the information flow between the models. We describe these hydropower scheduling toolchains, identify the similarities and differences, and shed light on the original ideas that motivated their creation. We then discuss the need to improve and extend the current toolchains and the opportunities to synergistic research that embrace those contextual differences.