Cooperative Control of Hydro-Power Systems

The schedule and control of a set (chain) of hydro-power plants is taken into account. Even if the water input flows vary significantly and the estimations often fail, the lake levels have to be constrained and the power generation should be preferentially provided during the peak hours. The proposed solution for long time schedules of the generator working times are based on genetic algorithm. Due to the fact that the long time estimated input flows are different of the real input flows, the off-line scheduling performance is low, so cooperative control methods that works on-line are used to improve the schedules for each quarter of a day. Fuzzy logic rules are used for the short time scheduling and genetic algorithms are used off-line for obtaining the rules that work on-line. The cooperation of neighbor controllers is necessary to avoid the conflicts involved by their local objectives.