Uncertainty based operation of large scale reservoir systems: Dez and Karoon experience

Reservoir operation involves a complex set of human decisions depending upon hydrologic conditions in the supply network including watersheds, lakes, transfer tunnels, and rivers. Water releases from reservoirs are adjusted in an attempt to provide a balanced response to different demands. When a system involves more than one reservoir, computational burdens have been a major obstacle in incorporating uncertainties and variations in supply and demand. A new generation of stochastic dynamic programming was developed in the 1980s and 1990s to incorporate the forecast and demand uncertainties. The Bayesian Stochastic Dynamic Programming (BSDP) model and its extension, Demand Driven Stochastic Dynamic Programming (DDSP) model, are among those models. Recently, a Fuzzy Stochastic Dynamic Programming model (FSDP) also was developed for a single reservoir to model the errors associated with discretizing the variables using fuzzy set theory. In this study the DDSP and the FSDP models were extended and simplified for a complex system of Dez and Karoon reservoirs in the southwestern part of Iran. The simplified models are called Condensed Demand Driven Stochastic Programming (CDDSP) and Condensed Fuzzy Stochastic Dynamic Programming (CFSDP). The optimal operating policies developed by the CDDSP and the CFSDP models were simulated in a classical model and a fuzzy simulation model, respectively. The case study was used to demonstrate the advantages of implementing the proposed algorithm, and the results show the significant value of the proposed fuzzy based algorithm.