Optimized scheduling of hydropower with increase in solar and wind installations

Abstract The existing hydropower plants that were built to serve the base load in the past are now made to run as stand-by units to take up the variation in generation caused due to the increasing solar and wind energy in the grid. This reduces the generation as well as the revenue of these plants and creating a conflict of interest between generating companies and system operators. Thus, arising a need to revise the operating policies of existing hydropower plants, not only for the present capacities of solar and wind but also taking future additions into the account. This problem is taken up in this study on behalf of the state power generating company for their existing hydropower plants. The optimization is carried out using two algorithms, i.e. non-linear optimization and logical optimization. The optimization results provide certain operational observations on many powerhouses, following which the generation could be increased without any additional investment. The algorithms when used for the future additions of solar, wind and thermal, is found to be quite sensitive to the reservoir inflow data. The critical comparison of the used algorithms reveals that rule of thumb can also perform very well when compared with the true optimization.