Dynamic Programming Heuristics for the Optimization of Hydropower Planning

Abstract: In short-term planning of a hydropower system one optimizes the choice of release of water and which generators to use. This problem is prone to Bellman's curse of dimensionality, since the amount of states increases exponentially with the amount of hydropower stations in the system. In this thesis, two different dynamic programming heuristics to this problem are derived, described and compared with a heuristic developed by Powel AS. A difficulty that extends the problem, is the addition of a power reserve on each time period. A third dynamic programming heuristic is developed to deal with a constraint on the power reserve and the parallel with knapsack problem is described. The new dynamic programming approaches perform similar to the heuristic by Powel AS. The third dynamic programming heuristic that deals with the reserve constraints, provides a better way of dealing with and fulfilling the constraint than currently in place by Powel AS.