Long-term hydrothermal scheduling using composite thermal and composite hydro representations

Abstract

The paper presents a new long-term, large-scale hydrothermal production scheduling method. The proposed method uses both composite hydro and composite thermal representations, based on the monthly or weekly energy requirement. The method can minimise the thermal production cost and maximise the hydro production profit. The advantage of this method is that it uses a more precise cost objective function considering unit commitment effect. The method can be used by the owners of independent hydro plants in a region for long-term hydroelectric scheduling under both deregulation and competition. A case study shows that the model allocates successfully and efficiently the hydroelectric resources to the peak demand periods with negligible computation time.