Abstract:
This paper provides a computationally efficient nonlinear method for solving the turbine unit commitment for a single hydropower plant. It proposes a new heuristic method which are strongly rooted in some analytical results. Based on the dual decomposition optimization strategy it is analytically derived a closed-form solution for the number of generating units as well as the power allocated to each unit, providing the basis of a robust heuristic optimization method. The objective is to maximize the generated energy given the discharge, water head, the entire plant downstream flow, the variable discharge upper limit, the unit efficiency curves, and the prohibited operating zones. Numerical tests in real-world plants are presented, and they show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, generating considerably higher energy for the same water discharge. It is also compared with a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) approach, providing a speed-up of 1,000 times. The formulation presented in this paper is operating in a commercial program that is currently applied in the operation of 18 hydropower plants, including Belo Monte power plant, which has 24 generation units