21 / 2015-12-01 12:12:43

Optimal Water Releasing Policy for Sustainable Reservoir Operation

Reservoir operation, sustainable management, nonlinear program

Abstract - This research highlights progress developing sustainable management strategies for multipurpose reservoir operation systems. The reservoir systems provide multiple benefits of irrigation, municipal and industrial water supply, flood control, and hydro-power generation. However, the systems also bring side effects on environment, i.e., a negative influence on the health of the downstream ecosystem such as endangering some fish species and damaging plants downstream. This operation has gained much attention over the last decade. However, most research efforts have been focused on typically optimizing energy and producer-economic benefits, and there have been minimal attempts to develop research on the reservoir operating system under environmentally sustainable conditions. This paper presents an optimization model to derive an optimal operation policy for a multipurpose reservoir system. Unlike the conventional reservoir management, the proposed model maximizes both ecological benefits and those associated with municipal and industrial consumption. The applicability of the optimization model is demonstrated in the case study of Heron Reservoir in the State of New Mexico, United States. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model for deriving optimal policies for multipurpose reservoir operation. The results can also be expanded to offer many alternative policies for the reservoir operator, giving flexibility to choose the best out of them.
Index Terms - Reservoir operation, sustainable manage