A pool-based rule curve shows (1) minimum and maximum water level or storage volume for each day or month in a year and (2) the reservoir release in dependence of water level or storage for each day of the year. The second item (2) is very important: here is the anticipation on the coming drought or flood season. If the reservoir is already filled in the wet season, more water must be released to be able to catch a flood wave. If the reservoir stage is low during a drought season, less water should be released to be able to supply water until the end of the dry season. Instead of putting all the tools and know-how into a complex operational system, an easy-to-use operational protocol from itshall be distillated.
Aim of the thesis is to include long-term issues, like sediment management, droughts, environmental flow, etc. into a RTC-Tool and to verify the pool-based rule-curves for the hydropower operator.
Figure 1: Pool-based rule curve (Homann, 2017) Figure 2: Reservoir in the Philippines
Optimizing a hydraulic system for power generation from hydropower leads to nonlinearities. Aim of the thesis is to show the limit of applying a linearization (constant water level difference) and to show the methods of "piecewise linear" and "homotopy" to consider nonlinearities. In doing so, various management goals (maximization energy production, specification of power output, level compliance, environmental requirements, hydro-peaking) and various system configurations (single power plant, power plant cascade, run-of-river power station, and storage power plant) shall be considered. Hydraulic modeling (simplifications of the Saint-Venant equations, memory equation, turbine equation) and mathematical optimization with RTC (Real Time Control) tools will be used.
