A FAST ALGORITHM FOR OPTIMAL HYDROTHERMAL SCHEDULING WITH CASCADED AND INDEPENDENT HYDRO PLANTS

This paper presents a fast algorithm for solving the short-term hydrothermal scheduling problem in a power system consisting of cascaded plants with time delay and independent hydro plants. The operational planning of such problem is concerned with the determination of scheduling for hydro as well as thermal plants to meet the daily system demand with the objective of minimizing the total fuel cost of the thermal plants over the day subject to the relevant operating constraints associated with the thermal and hydro plants. The algorithm employs a fast and simple alternating solution approach for hydrothermal scheduling in which the hydro subproblem is solved using the method of local variation while the associated thermal subproblem is solved through a judicious combination of successive Linear Programming (SLP) method and Participation Factor method. Many computational features are incorporated in the solution algorithm exploiting the inherent characteristic of the complex hydrothermal scheduling problem.