Hydropower

Hydropower Flexibility Highlighted at Clean Currents 2024

Gwendolyn Miller — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:22:37 +0000

Hydropower Flexibility Highlighted at Clean Currents 2024 Gwendolyn Miller Tue, 11/12/2024 - 12:22

At this year’s Clean Currents conference in Portland, OR CADSWES industry expert Tim Magee delivered a compelling presentation titled “System-Level Hydropower Flexibility” on October 9. Magee’s talk explored the critical role of hydropower flexibility within a growing and increasingly diverse energy grid. His presentation introduced innovative "flexibility charts" and metrics designed to assess hydropower systems at scale, a breakthrough approach that promises to reshape visual and numerical evaluations of flexibility across different reservoirs and systems. Clean Currents 2024, held from October 7–10, remains the leading event for the waterpower industry, bringing together insights and advancements that address pressing challenges in sustainable energy.

For more details, visit Clean Currents: The official All-Encompassing Waterpower Event That's for the Industry, by the Industry.

Abstract
The inherent flexibility of hydropower units is known to be valuable for both power producers and the larger power grid because many other power sources are less flexible, and some sources are not dispatchable. These limitations of other power sources and their growing use means that fully taking advantage of hydropower flexibility is more important than ever.
Our work with operational models that cover 1/3 of the U.S. hydropower fleet and our prior flexibility research informs our opinion that the flexibility of individual units often does not translate to system level flexibility because of other constraints at the plant and system level, often reflecting the multi-purpose use of reservoirs, mismatched hydropower plant sizes, lag times between reservoirs, and many other factors. From a power perspective, there is an important and open need to assess actual system level flexibility both visually and numerically.
We present new “flexibility charts” to visualize system-level hydropower flexibility and flexibility metrics derived from these charts. These charts and metrics provide a basis to make a variety of visual and numerical comparisons: different reservoirs, different systems, different policies, different conditions, etc. The flexibility charts generalize the concept of the average utilization factor for a hydropower plant over a period of time to a system of reservoirs, We motivate and illustrate flexibility charts with multiple plant examples. We also differentiate between theoretical, optimal, and observed flexibility charts and metrics.

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Magee presents on RiverWare hydropower flexibilities at CEATI 2024 Conference

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 22:22:33 +0000

Magee presents on RiverWare hydropower flexibilities at CEATI 2024 Conference Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/18/2024 - 16:22

Tim Magee presented “Realizing Hydropower Flexibility with RiverWare“ at the CEATI Hydropower Conference March 20, 2024, in Palm Springs CA. The presentation was co-authored by Edie Zagona, also from CADSWES, and Gabe Miller from TVA was a co-presenter. The presentation was well received and shared important technology available to adapt to a changing hydropower landscape. More about the conference is available.

Abstract:

Fully realizing the potential flexibility of hydropower is essential both because of the variability of load and the growing penetration of renewable generation. While renewables contribute generation, renewables also add variability to the net load after subtracting their generation. The remainder of generation portfolios, including hydropower, face an ever-increasing need for generation flexibility, and the value of that flexibility is likely to increase.

Hydropower is an innately flexible resource, but that flexibility is not always realized. We describe several approaches to realizing the hydropower flexibility. All approaches use RiverWare’s preemptive goal programming optimization method.

One approach to realizing hydropower flexibility is to reconsider standard operating practices that are not formally required but are limiting flexibility. We present the measured gain in flexibility from relaxing some of these common practices.

Another approach to realizing hydropower flexibility is to accurately represent hydropower flexibility in production cost models (PCMs) which include power demand, transmission, and other sources of generation. A complimentary part of realizing hydropower flexibility is including the data generated by PCMs as signals to drive hydropower models. Together, this bidirectional transfer of data can use hydropower flexibility to jointly optimize all generation sources for cost and reliability. We describe several approaches we have applied to real hydropower systems, including TVA, BPA, and others. We also describe the lessons learned from these approaches.

We present one approach in more detail, a case study at TVA with a novel iterative process that approximates joint optimization of hydropower with its flexibility and a portfolio of other generation within a PCM. The iteration ultimately solves both a hydropower model and a PCM twice to approximately optimize TVA’s generation portfolio. This optimization is done with the minimum possible violation of TVA’s higher priority non-power constraints on the hydropower system.

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Optimizing Flexible Spill Operations Presentation at CEATI Conference

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 23:00:07 +0000

Optimizing Flexible Spill Operations Presentation at CEATI Conference Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/24/2022 - 17:00

Mitch Clement and Tim Magee attended the CEATI Hydropower Conference in Palm Springs, California, March 15-16, 2022. The theme of the conference was "The Past, Present and Future of Hydropower". The conference was attended by members of the hydropower industry from across North America. Clement gave a presentation "Optimizing Flexible Spill Operations on the Columbia River for Bonneville Power Administration" on the 16th. The presentation was in the Hydropower Operations and Planning Interest Group track in a session on Flexibility and Optimization.

Authors: CADSWES - Mitch Clement, Tim Magee, Edith Zagona; Bonniville Power Administration - Shane Mosier, Anna Stermer

Abstract: The Flexible Spill Agreement for the Columbia River System is largely viewed as a success story of collaborative, adaptive management that prevented costly litigation. The agreement was negotiated so that Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) could obtain significant value from power generation at hydropower plants on the Lower Snake and Lower Columbia Rivers while also providing the ecological value of improved conditions for migrating juvenile salmon. The agreement required increased spill at hydropower dams for improved fish passage but also provided flexibility to reduce spill up to eight hours each day for increased power generation.

BPA uses RiverWare Optimization for planning hourly operations for the 19 GW of capacity of the “Big 10” hydropower plants in the Columbia Basin over a two to three-week horizon. The RiverWare model optimizes hydropower operations within a wide range of high-profile environmental obligations. The Flexible Spill operation presents significant challenges for an optimization solution: the selection of the optimal hours to reduce spill is a mixed integer program; there are restrictions on the timing of the blocks of hours with reduced spill; additional constraints are in place for the eight hours of increased power generation to mitigate impacts on fish passage; specialized logic governs days with low inflows. We will describe how we utilized “trial objectives” with heuristics within RiverWare’s preemptive linear goal programming framework to optimize the Flexible Spill operation. We will also describe how the model formulation was adjusted over time to correspond with changes in the adaptive management strategy. The timely implementation of the Flexible Spill modeling gave BPA an efficient mechanism to plan which hours to reduce spill and allowed BPA to provide accurate generation forecasts to stakeholders throughout the Flexible Spill operations. The optimization solution helped deliver the hydropower value envisioned when the agreement was made.

More about the conference is available on the CEATI website.

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Tim Magee Presents at Virtual 2020 INFORMS Annual Meeting, November 2020

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 01:05:15 +0000

Tim Magee Presents at Virtual 2020 INFORMS Annual Meeting, November 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/18/2020 - 18:05

Tim Magee presented “Production Cost Model Evaluation with a Hydropower Operations Model” on November 9, 2020, at the annual meeting of INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals. Co-authors were Mitch Clement and Edith Zagona of CADSWES and Nathalie Voisin of Pacific Northwest National Labs.

Abstract: Grid-scale production cost models (PCMs) optimize generation and transmission of electricity to meet load. Hydropower is an important component of these models because its flexibility aids the addition of intermittent renewable generation, such as wind and solar power, to the grid. Grid-scale PCM models do not include many of the factors that limit hydropower flexibility. We reuse a detailed RiverWare model of the Columbia River used in daily operations both to evaluate existing PCM simulations over the North American Western Interconnect and to improve the representation of hydropower in PCMs. The RiverWare model uses a combination of goal programming methods that reflect policy priorities for power and nonpower purposes. The model can precisely evaluate the flexibility effects of factors such as reservoir storage state, forecasted inflows and seasonal constraints.

At the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) 2020 virtual annual meeting, held Nov. 7–13, 2020, Tim Magee of CADSWES presented “Production Cost Model Evaluation with a Hydropower Operations Model.” INFORMS is the leading international association for operations research, management science and analytics.

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Edie Zagona Co-authors Study Identifying Risks and Benefits of GERD

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 20:51:21 +0000

Edie Zagona Co-authors Study Identifying Risks and Benefits of GERD Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/21/2020 - 14:51

New study identifies risks and benefits of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to Nile Countries and highlights necessity of coordinated drought planning

Near-term impacts of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on downstream water availability for Egypt and Sudan are unlikely to cause shortages, but drought preparedness will require careful coordination, suggests research published October 16 by researchers from the University of Oxford, The University of Manchester, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Colorado Boulder, and Duke University. Edith Zagona, director of CADSWES, was a co-author of the study, published this month in Nature Communications .

Construction of the dam, purposed for hydropower, is almost complete, and filling began this year, straining relations between countries along the Nile River. Negotiations on how to fill and operate the dam ended in deadlock again in September, partially over the perceived implications for water shortages in Sudan and Egypt. The proceedings have been made more difficult by a lack of reservoir simulation models that are considered sufficiently credible by all negotiators and decision makers involved.

The study used CADSWES RiverWare hydrologic policy modeling software to simulate conditions during the filling of the GERD reservoir, the “new normal” period afterward and under a historical severe multiyear drought after the filling. It shows that during the initial filling of the GERD, the High Aswan Dam’s (HAD) reservoir will fall, but the risk of additional water shortage in Egypt is relatively low. Once in operation, the GERD will benefit Ethiopia and Sudan without significantly affecting water users in Egypt as long as water flow in the Nile remains similar to its historical average. An “inevitable” severe drought would require an agreement in advance on how to coordinate operations to minimize harmful impacts.

“Detailed modeling and analysis of operations is needed for successful negotiation of an agreement,” said Zagona. “In this paper the results of the complex simulations are presented in a way that nontechnical decision makers and others can understand.”

The paper concludes that developing robust contingency plans is not an insurmountable task and that in most years the GERD and HAD will require only data exchange and modest coordination.

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CADSWES Presentations at 10th iEMSs Conference, September 2020

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 20:45:20 +0000

CADSWES Presentations at 10th iEMSs Conference, September 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/16/2020 - 14:45

CADSWES and CEAE collaborators contributed several presentations to the 10th iEMSs Conference, September 14–18, 2020, in Brussels, Belgium. The conference is sponsored by the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society. Following are the presenters and their presentations (and authors).

Mitch Clement: “Complex Hydro-policy Modeling with RiverWare for Collaborative Multi-objective River System and Hydropower Planning and Operations” (Clement, Zagona)
Nathan Bonham: “Evaluation of Scenario Discovery Methods for Multi-Reservoir System Planning” (Bonham, Kasprzyk, Zagona)
Joe Kasprzyk:
- “Improving Interpretability of Multi-Objective Tradeoff Sets for Environmental Systems” (Kasprzyk, Smith, Raseman, Jacobson, Balaji)
- “Multiobjective Optimization to Support Long-term Water Treatment Planning” (Kasprzyk, Raseman)
- “Using Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms and RiverWare for Generating Robust Lake Mead Operating Policies” (Kasprzyk, Elliot, Zagona, Smith, Prairie, Jerla, Butler)

Collaborators from CADSWES and CU Boulder Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) delivered multiple presentations at the 10th annual International Environmental Modelling and Software Society (iEMSs) event, hosted virtually via Zoom from Brussels, Belgium.

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CADSWES Presents at CEAE Hydrology & Water Resources Seminar, April 29, 2020

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 21:45:31 +0000

CADSWES Presents at CEAE Hydrology & Water Resources Seminar, April 29, 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/27/2020 - 15:45

Presented by Mitch Clement and Tim Magee, from the Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES)

This Hydrology & Water Resources Seminar will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday, April 29, and can be attended via Zoom.

Email us if you are interested in attending .

Abstract: Hydropower has become an increasingly essential component of the energy generation resource mix, particularly as power utilities increase their renewable energy portfolio. CU’s Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES) has developed and applied RiverWare software to model both power and nonpower reservoir uses. RiverWare is widely used in practice by power utilities and system operators for both planning and operations in systems where hydropower must be managed in conjunction with a wide array of complex environmental requirements and other nonpower constraints. Practical optimization of hydropower in operational settings presents many challenges, including the handling of multiple, competing objectives and the need to derive reasonable linear representations of nonlinear processes. These challenges have led to research innovations at CADSWES. We will discuss these hydropower modeling challenges, novel approaches to address these challenges, how these innovations have been utilized in operations applications, previous research, and future research topics.

Mitch Clement and Tim Magee of CADSWES present “RiverWare for Managing Hydropower in Complex River Basins” at the CU Boulder CEAE Hydrology & Water Resources Seminar, 11 a.m., Wednesday, April 29, 2020, via Zoom.

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Tim Magee and Mitch Clement at CEATI Conference

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 17:13:09 +0000

Tim Magee and Mitch Clement at CEATI Conference Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/28/2016 - 11:13

Tim Magee and Mitch Clement attended the Centre for Energy Advancement through Innovation (CEATI) Hydropower Workshop: “Optimizing Hydropower Operations – Mathematical Modelling Tools.” Tim gave a presentation, “RiverWare Optimization” and participated in a presentation with TVA and Riverside Technology, Inc., “The Challenges of System-Wide Operations Modeling at the Tennessee Valley Authority.” The conference was held in Seattle, Washington, November 3–4, 2016. The talks were well received and hope it will expose more people in the industry to the work being done here and more about RiverWare.

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