HEURISTIC OPERATING POLICIES FOR RESERVOIR SYSTEM SIMULATION

Reservoir system simulation models are widely used to determine a system's firm water yield, average yield, or hydropower capacity. Most such models use heuristic guidelines to define the system's operating policy. Alternatively, optimization can be used within the simulation to identify a reasonable operating strategy. In this paper a theoretical justification is provided for several heuristic operating guidelines, including the widely used space rule. The guidelines are expressed as a mathematical objective function and combined with constraints on system operation to yield one-period optimization submodels that can be used to determine releases within a simulation. Use of these one-period optimization models improved the simulated operation of the Central Valley Project in California over the critical period of provided reasonable policies for other hydrologic scenarios.