Maximizing energy generation of a cascade hydropower system

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Vehbi Karaeren, A.Burcu Altan-Sakarya

Friday 3 july 2015

13:30 - 13:45h at Europe 1 (level 0)

Themes: (T) Hydro-environment, (ST) Renewable energy resources

Parallel session: 16G. Environment - Renewable

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Electricity has become one of the main pillars of a well-functioning society and hydroelectric power plants (HEPPs) are one of the main providers of energy in Turkey that are also renewable. To exploit the energy production capacity of existing HEPPs in Turkey and efficient usage of water, operational optimization could help immensely. A non-linear constrained optimization algorithm with an extension, namely a heuristic that provides starting points, has been implemented to maximize the energy production of a cascade HEPP system based on monthly inflow data. A cascade of four dams along the Murat River, which is one of the two main streams of Euphrates River at the Eastern part of Turkey, was studied to test the abilities of the mentioned algorithm. A 40-year average monthly flow data was used as input and results of cascade and single optimization were compared. Results showed that the developed MATLAB® script can converge to an optimum solution that satisfies the constraints. The comparison study made with individual runs of each HEPP showed that a 5% higher energy production was attained with the cascade variant. A drawback was the higher computational time (which was still within comparable limits), which can be further improved by implementing more efficient algorithms.