Algoritmo para maximizar la producción energética en un sistema hidroeléctrico con embalse de regulación

Abstract

This technical project has been carried out with the aim to estimate the maximum energy production of a hydroelectric power plant with a regulating reservoir, through the optimization of the minimum reservoir operation level (MROL). To achieve this objective, an application has been developed to simulate the regulation operation in the reservoir and quantify the transit and accumulated energies. By using an optimization algorithm, the MROL is estimated to obtain the maximum energy produced by the hydroelectric power plant. The application uses as input data the incoming flows in the river, the discharge curve at the project site, the height-area-capacity curves in the reservoir, the installed power in the plant with its respective efficiency and capacity factor. To test the application, three scenarios were analyzed. The first two scenarios are based on the Santiago Hydroelectric Project, considering feasibility and definitive stages studies, while the third scenario is a hypothetical case under different conditions to test the algorithm’s use. As a result of scenarios 1 and 2, it was found that the energy production in transit is predominant due to the limited reservoir capacity compared to the relatively large inflows rates. For scenario 3, the emphasis was placed on increasing the reservoir capacity, obtaining a similar magnitude of accumulated and in-transit energy. This allowed finding an optimal MROL for maximum energy generation, different from the minimum or maximum level in the reservoir. Th algorithm’s performance is suitable under the various conditions presented by the different scenarios, and in all cases, the objective related to energy maximization has been achieved.