DETERMINISTIC DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING FOR LONG TERM RESERVOIR OPERATING POLICIES

This paper describes a method of using deterministic dynamic programming to determine the long term operating policy for a reservoir system. The long term policy is defined to be the policy which is to be used as a matter of routine, without foreknowledge of future events. Stochastic dynamic programming formulations of this problem have been advocated, but because of excessive computer times used in the analysis, the approach is only feasible for small systems. This complication does not apply to deterministic formulations but the analysis produces only the optimal policy for the particular flow trace that was used, not one that may occur at random. The paper describes one way of overcoming this latter restriction. The effect of length of data sequence and reservoir size is also investigated. Policies produced by the new method compared favourably with those obtained by simulation.