Assessment of risk-averse policies for the long-term hydrothermal scheduling problem

The goal of the long-term hydrothermal scheduling (LTHS) problem is to determine an optimal policy that minimises the expected operational cost over a multi-annual planning horizon. In this problem, inflows are naturally random; thus, the development of policies requires the use of specialised techniques such as stochastic optimization algorithms. Although the optimal policy defined by means of the expected cost is economically efficient, the associated decisions can incur a high risk of energy deficit. To overcome such disadvantages, one alternative is to include a risk-measure approach in the LTHS modeling. In this study, we compared two different risk-measure strategies applied to the LTHS problem: (i) a convex combination between the conditional value at risk (CVaR) and the expected operational cost, (ii) a reservoir risk-curve. To accomplish the comparison, we consider the Brazilian power system with a 5-year planning horizon discretized in monthly stages. The policies supplied by the risk-averse strategies are simulated in a set of synthetic inflow scenarios. Thus, the results are obtained in terms of the expected long-term hydrothermal decisions, such as the total operational cost and the reservoir storage. In summary, the CVaR-based policies provided better operational results than the risk-curve one. © 2016, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.