Short-term operation scheduling of a hydropower plant in the day-ahead electricity market

This paper presents a novel approach to solve the short-term operation scheduling problem of a hydropower plant that sells energy in a deregulated electricity market with the objective of maximizing its revenue. This paper proposes a nonlinear programming based scheduling model that determines both the optimal unit commitment (start-ups and shut-downs scheduling) and the generation dispatch of the committed units (hourly power output). The power generated by each hydro unit is considered as a nonlinear function of the water discharge and the volume of the associated reservoir. The dependence of the units’ operating limits (maximum and minimum water flows) on the actual gross head has been also taken into account in this model. The results from a case study are also presented to illustrate the application of the proposed approach in a real hydro plant.