Optimal short-term operation schedule of a hydropower plant in a competitive electricity market

This paper presents a dynamic programming model to solve the short-term scheduling problem of a hydropower plant that sells energy in a pool-based electricity market with the objective of maximizing the revenue. This is a nonlinear and non-concave problem subject to strong technical and strategic constraints, and in which discrete and continuous variables take part. The model described in this paper determines, in each hour of the planning horizon (typically from one day to one week), both the optimal number of units in operation (unit commitment) and the power to be generated by the committed units (generation dispatch). The power generated by each unit is considered as a nonlinear function of the actual water discharge and volume of the associated reservoir. The dependence of the units’ efficiency and operating limits with the available gross head is also accounted for in this model. The application of this model to a real hydropower plant demonstrates its capabilities in providing the operation schedule that maximizes the revenue of the hydro plant while satisfying several constraints of different classes. In addition, the use of this model as a supporting tool to estimate the economic feasibility of a hydropower plant development project is also analyzed in the paper.