Optimization of reservoirs in series on a river with a nonlinear storage curve for long-term regulation (Q579200)

We present a new approach to finding the monthly optimal operation of a multireservoir power system connected in series on a river. The hydroelectric power generation is a highly nonlinear function of the storage, and the conversion factor assigned to each power plant is also a nonlinear function of the storage. We use for both a quadratic function of the storage; the resulting problem has a highly nonlinear objective function and linear constraints. We propose a transformation such that the system equations are reduced to linear-quadratic form. Lagrange and Kuhn-Tucker multipliers are used to adjoin the equality and inequality constraints to the objective function. Numerical results are presented for a real system in operation consisting of two reservoirs in series on a river for widely different water conditions.