Real‐Time Operation of Tanshui River Reservoirs

This paper reports the development and application of a modeling package for the real‐time operation of Feitsui and Shihmen Reservoirs in the Tanshui River Basin, Taiwan, the Republic of China. The modeling package consists of a 10‐day (the traditional reservoir operation period in Taiwan) streamflow forecast model, a rule‐curve‐based simulation model, and an optimization model. Given a forecasted streamflow sequence for the entire year, the simulation model is first used to determine whether a severe shortage of water is expected. Using the simulation results as an initial feasible operating policy and an appropriate objective function (which is different for periods with and without an anticipated shortage), a dynamic‐programming‐based optimization model is then used to determine an improved operating policy. At the end of each 10‐day period, the streamflow forecast is updated using a Kalman filter technique and the observed streamflow during the period, and the simulation and optimization models will be rerun for the remaining periods of the year. The cycle repeats until the last period is reached. Tested with actual operational records and a hypothetical condition, the models are shown to be capable of producing improved 10‐day operating rules for the present reservoir system. The entire modeling system was run on a VAX 8650 and an IBM‐AT compatible personal computer (PC). The execution time for a 1‐yr (36 10‐day periods) operation is less than 5 min on the VAX 8650, and about 45 min on the PC.