Evaluation of Multipurpose Reservoir Operating Policies at Basin and Electric Power System Scales
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 150, Issue 7
Abstract
Climatic phenomena, particularly hydrological droughts, have led to significant changes in reservoir operation strategies. Multipurpose reservoir operations are essential for effectively managing stored water resources for various activities like electricity generation and agricultural irrigation. Despite considerable efforts to support decision making for each economic activity, there remains a weak integration across these sectors in joint analyses. To address this, an integrated approach combining a model of a large power system and a model at the basin scale is proposed to analyze the operation of both power and agricultural systems. This approach allows evaluation of the operating policies of a multipurpose reservoir and its performance at both the local and regional scales under different hydrological scenarios. A modification is implemented whereby the priority of water extraction to agricultural users is increased. Its effects are assessed for different hydrological trajectories in a case study in the Laja Lake basin in southern Chile, the biggest Chilean basin with a capacity of up to . The Laja Lake, a multipurpose reservoir with substantial hydroelectric generation capacity and extensive agricultural areas plays a crucial role in the operation of the national power system. Based on an analysis of 2025, it is demonstrated that hydrological changes directly impact electrical and agricultural performance. Drought conditions increase thermal generation, costs, emission intensity, and water deficits. Furthermore, the policy modification reveals tradeoffs between the power sector’s emissions and agricultural water deficits. For drier scenarios, increasing agricultural extraction priority results in low additional operational costs and emissions from the power system, which supports adopting a policy aligned with netzero objectives.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Available data items include the tested instances. Historical data are publicly available by the National Energy Commission (NEC 2018).
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by ANID-FONDEF-IT19I0113, ANID-FONDECYT-1211378, ANID-FSEQ210018, ANID-PFCHA/National Doctorate Program/2019-21190693, the Solar Energy Research Center (SERC-Chile) (ANID-FONDAP-15110019), and the Complex Engineering Systems Institute (ANID-FB0816).
References
Barría, C., A. Santander, Á. Caviedes, C. Toro, B. Eguiguren, C. Coronado, and C. Mancilla. 2021. Planificación energética de largo plazo 2023–2027. Washington, DC: Ministerio de Energia.
Basheer, M., V. Nechifor, A. Calzadilla, K. Siddig, M. Etichia, D. Whittington, D. Hulme, and J. J. Harou. 2021. “Collaborative management of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam increases economic benefits and resilience.” Nat. Commun. 12 (1): 5622. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25877-w.
Benders, J. F. 1962. “Partitioning procedures for solving mixed-variables programming problems.” Numer. Math. 4 (1): 238–252. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01386316.
Bolouri-Yazdeli, Y., O. B. Haddad, E. Fallah-Mehdipour, and M. A. Mariño. 2014. “Evaluation of real-time operation rules in reservoir systems operation.” Water Resour. Manage. 28 (3): 715–729. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-013-0510-1.
Cooley, H., R. Phurisamban, and P. Gleick. 2019. “The cost of alternative urban water supply and efficiency options in California.” Environ. Res. Commun. 1 (4): 042001. https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/ab22ca.
Dowson, O., and L. Kapelevich. 2021. “SDDP.jl: A Julia package for stochastic dual dynamic programming.” INFORMS J. Comput. 33 (1): 27–33. https://doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.2020.0987.
ENDESA (Empresa Nacional de Electricidad S.A.). 1958. Convenio ad-Referendum sobre la regulacipon del Río Laja. Santiago, Chile: Dirección Nacional de Riego—ENDESA.
FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation). 2014. The water-energy-food nexus at FAO: Concept note. Rome: FAO.
Favereau, M., A. Lorca, and M. Negrete-Pincetic. 2023. “Multistage adaptive robust optimization for the hydrothermal scheduling problem.” Comput. Oper. Res. 150 (Feb): 106051. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2022.106051.
Favereau, M., A. Lorca, M. Negrete-Pincetic, and S. Vicuña. 2022. “Robust streamflow forecasting: A student’s t-mixture vector autoregressive model.” Stochastic Environ. Res. Risk Assess. 36 (11): 3979–3995. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-022-02241-y.
Galetovic, A., and C. M. Muñoz. 2009. “Estimating deficit probabilities with price-responsive demand in contract-based electricity markets.” Energy Policy 37 (2): 560–569. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2008.09.079.
Gjelsvik, A., B. Mo, and A. Haugstad. 2010. “Long- and medium-term operations planning and stochastic modelling in hydro-dominated power systems based on stochastic dual dynamic programming.” In Handbook of power systems I, 33–55. Berlin: Springer.
Gjerden, K. S., A. Helseth, B. Mo, and G. Warland. 2015. “Hydrothermal scheduling in Norway using stochastic dual dynamic programming; a large-scale case study.” In Proc., 2015 IEEE Eindhoven PowerTech, 1–6. New York: IEEE.
Gonzalez, J., M. Olivares, J. Medellín-Azuara, R. Moreno, and G. Marques. 2016. “Multi-purpose reservoir operation: A tradeoff analysis between hydropower generation and irrigated agriculture using hydro-economic models.” In Proc., World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2016. Reston, VA: ASCE.
Gonzalez, J. M., M. A. Olivares, J. Medellín-Azuara, and R. Moreno. 2020. “Multipurpose reservoir operation: A multi-scale tradeoff analysis between hydropower generation and irrigated agriculture.” Water Resour. Manage. 34 (Jul): 2837–2849. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-020-02586-5.
Hashimoto, T., J. R. Stedinger, and D. P. Loucks. 1982. “Reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability criteria for water resource system performance evaluation.” Water Resour. Res. 18 (1): 14–20. https://doi.org/10.1029/WR018i001p00014.
Helseth, A., A. Gjelsvik, B. Mo, and U. Linnet. 2013. “A model for optimal scheduling of hydro thermal systems including pumped-storage and wind power.” IET Gener. Transm. Distrib. 7 (12): 1426–1434. https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-gtd.2012.0639.
Hightower, M., and S. A. Pierce. 2008. “The energy challenge.” Nature 452 (7185): 285–286. https://doi.org/10.1038/452285a.
Jain, S. 1993. Chap. 1 in Introduction to reservoir systems. New Delhi, India: National Institute of Hydrology.
Jander, V., S. Vicuña, O. Melo, and A. Lorca. 2023. “Adaptation to climate change in basins within the context of the water-energy-food nexus.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage. 149 (11): 04023060. https://doi.org/10.1061/JWRMD5.WRENG-5566.
Jazmin, Z. S., P. M. Reed, J. D. Herman, M. Giuliani, and A. Castelletti. 2016. “A diagnostic assessment of evolutionary algorithms for multi-objective surface water reservoir control.” Adv. Water Resour. 92 (Jun): 172–185. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2016.04.006.
Khadem, M., R. J. Dawson, and C. L. Walsh. 2021. “The feasibility of inter-basin water transfers to manage climate risk in England.” Clim. Risk Manage. 33 (Jan): 100322. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2021.100322.
Kim, G. J., Y.-O. Kim, and P. M. Reed. 2021. “Improving the robustness of reservoir operations with stochastic dynamic programming.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage. 147 (7): 712–722. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0001381.
Labadie, J. W. 2004. “Optimal operation of multireservoir systems: State-of-the-art review.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage. 130 (2): 93–111. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9496(2004)130:2(93).
Lohmann, T., A. S. Hering, and S. Rebennack. 2016. “Spatio-temporal hydro forecasting of multireservoir inflows for hydro-thermal scheduling.” Eur. J. Oper. Res. 255 (1): 243–258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2016.05.011.
Lorca, A., M. Favereau, and D. Olivares. 2020. “Challenges in the management of hydroelectric generation in power system operations.” Curr. Sustainable/Renewable Energy Rep. 7 (Sep): 94–99. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40518-020-00152-6.
Loucks, P. 2000. “Sustainable water resources management.” Water Int. 25 (1): 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060008686793.
Matus, M., R. Sepúlveda, C. Matamala, and C. Benavides. 2019. “Modeling integrated water resource allocation for agriculture and economical energy production in the Laja Lake basin considering new irrigation policies.” In Proc., 4th Int. Conf. on Energy and Environment: Bringing Together Engineering and Economics, 16–17. Guimarães, Portugal: Univ. of Porto.
MOP (Ministerio de Obras Públicas). 2018. Guía Para la Explotación del Lago Laja. Santiago, Chile: MOP.
Mower, E., and L. E. Miranda. 2013. “Frameworks for amending reservoir water management.” Lake Reservoir Manage. 29 (3): 194–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/10402381.2013.829893.
Navarro, A., M. Favereau, A. Lorca, D. Olivares, and M. Negrete-Pincetic. 2024. “Medium-term stochastic hydrothermal scheduling with short-term operational effects for large-scale power and water networks.” Appl. Energy 358 (Mar): 122554. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.122554.
NEC (National Electric Coordinator). 2018. “Informes y Estudios—Operación.” Accessed March 15, 2024. https://www.coordinador.cl/operacion/documentos/.
Nicholson, S., and G. Heath. 2021. Life cycle emissions factors for electricity generation technologies. Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Pereira, M., and L. Pinto. 1991. “Multi-stage Stochastic optimization applied to energy planning. mathematical programming.” Math. Program. 52 (May): 359–375. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01582895.
Pereira-Bonvallet, E., S. Püschel-Løvengreen, M. Matus, and R. Moreno. 2016. “Optimizing hydrothermal scheduling with non-convex irrigation constraints: Case on the Chilean electricity system.” Energy Procedia 87 (Jan): 132–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2015.12.342.
Ricalde, I., S. Vicuña, O. Melo, J. E. Tomlinson, J. J. Harou, and G. Characklis. 2022. “Assessing tradeoffs in the design of climate change adaptation strategies for water utilities in Chile.” J. Environ. Manage. 302 (Jan): 114035. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.114035.
Shokri, A., and M. Sanavi Fard. 2023. “Techno-economic assessment of water desalination: Future outlooks and challenges.” Process Saf. Environ. Prot. 169 (Jan): 564–578. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psep.2022.11.007.
Smajgl, A., J. Ward, and L. Plushke. 2016. “The water-food-energy Nexus–Realising a new paradigm.” J. Hydrol. 533 (Feb): 533–540. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.12.033.
Tomlinson, J., J. Arnott, and J. Harou. 2020. “A water resource simulator in Python.” Environ. Modell. Software 126 (Apr): 104635. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2020.104635.
Zou, J., S. Ahmed, and X. A. Sun. 2019. “Stochastic dual dynamic integer programming.” Math. Program. 175 (May): 461–502. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10107-018-1249-5.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 150 • Issue 7 • July 2024
Copyright
© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 4, 2023
Accepted: Jan 26, 2024
Published online: Apr 26, 2024
Published in print: Jul 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Sep 26, 2024
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.