Author(s)

S.-C. Lin, R.-S. Wu & S.-W. Chen

Abstract

For multireservoir systems with hydropower purposes, the best strategy of joint operation is to firstly release water from the reservoir with the higher hydropower efficiency in order to achieve the highest benefits of the whole system. Considering the scarcity of water resources however, the operational practice is to follow a proper set of rule curves so as not only to reduce the water shortage amount and duration for downstream water demand but also to enhance the hydropower efficiency. Therefore, an operational model coupled with simulation and genetic algorithms is presented in this paper to overcome the difficulty with nonlinear and multiple parameters. In this paper, the joint operation of Shihmen and Festui Reservoirs in northern Taiwan was chosen for the case study. The study results indicate that the optimal operating rule curves of the parallel multireservoir system can achieve the highest hydropower benefit and meet the designed firm yield for water supply simultaneously. Keywords: parallel multireservoir systems, soft optimization, rule curve-based reservoir operation, hydropower. 1 Introduction Numerous studies address the problem of defining optimum operation rules for reservoir systems with multiple purposes. (Nalbantis and Koutsoyiannis [11], 1997; Belaineh et al., 1999 [1]; Lund and Guzman, 1999 [9]; Oscar and Eduardo, 2005 [12].) However, considering scarcity of water resources for water supply, the operation practice is to follow a proper set of rule curves so as not only to

Keywords

parallel multireservoir systems, soft optimization, rule curve-based reservoir operation, hydropower.