Deriving Reservoir Refill Operating Rules by Using the Proposed DPNS Model

The dynamic programming neural-network simplex (DPNS) model, which is aimed at making some improvements to the dynamic programming neural-network (DPN) model, is proposed and used to derive refill operating rules in reservoir planning and management. The DPNS model consists of three stages. First, the training data set (reservoir optimal sequences of releases) is searched by using the dynamic programming (DP) model to solve the deterministic refill operation problem. Second, with the training data set obtained, the artificial neural network (ANN) model representing the operating rules is trained through back-propagation (BP) algorithm. These two stages construct the standard DPN model. The third stage of DPNS is proposed to refine the operating rules through simulation-based optimization. By choosing maximum the hydropower generation as objective function, a nonlinear programming technique, Simplex method, is used to refine the final output of the DPN model. Both the DPNS and DPN models are used to derive operating rules for the real time refill operation of the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) for the year of 2007. It is shown that the DPNS model can improve not only the probability of refill but also the mean hydropower generation when compare with that of the DPN model. It's recommended that the objective function of ANN approach for deriving refill operating rules should maximize the yield or minimize the loss, which can be computed from reservoir simulation during the refill period, rather than to fit the optimal data set as well as possible. And the derivation of optimal or near-optimal operating rules can be carried out effectively and efficiently using the proposed DPNS model.