A Systems Approach to Real-Time Reservoir Operations

The problem of real-time reservoir operations is: given uncertainty about future conditions such as precipitation, streamflows and water related demands, and given long-term operating goals or objectives, and given shorter term guidelines for operation, how much water should be released from each dam during the next hour or day? The current methods used to address this problem in the United States often given considerable discretion to the reservoir operators who generally use their experience, rules of thumb, and intuition to decide on the next period’s releases. This decision process can often be well represented by an optimization model that formalizes the objectives and constraints of operation, and provides a focus for discussion on improved operations. This lecture will provide a review of the real-time reservoir operations problem; an overview of current operating methods; a survey of several optimization modeling approaches to the problem; and comments on several applications of these approaches.