MILP Model for Short-Term Hydro Scheduling with Head-Sensitive Prohibited Operating Zones

Head-sensitive prohibited operating zones are a critical challenge for short-term scheduling of cascaded hydropower plants for peak shaving. These prohibited operating zones add discrete characters to the nonlinear hydropower scheduling problem, making it tough to handle. This paper establishes a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model for short-term hydro scheduling with head-sensitive prohibited operating zones. The Min-Max objective function, plant performance curves and head-sensitive prohibited operating zones are mainly focused on. The Min-Max objective function is linearized via introducing linear combinations of constraints. The plant performance curves are linearized by a piecewise linear approximation. The avoidance of prohibited operating zones is incorporated into the linearization of plant performance curves so that head effect is captured. The case study of a two cascaded hydropower system is solved by LINGO. Numerical results show that the proposed MILP model is efficient and suitable for short-term hydropower optimal scheduling with prohibited operating zones for peak shaving.