Integer programming to optimize Micro-Hydro Power Plants for generic river profiles

This paper addresses the problem of designing an optimal micro-hydro power installation in rivers with generic profiles, when micro-hydro schemes are studied. This is geared towards the application of Micro-Hydro Power Plants to supply marginal isolated areas using small Pelton wheels, where both te...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Tapia Córdoba, Alejandro, Millán Gata, Pablo, Gómez-Estern Aguilar, Fabio
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universidad Loyola Andalucía
Repositorio:Brújula
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uloyola.es:20.500.12412/4331
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12412/4331
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Penstock optimization
Micro-hydro Power Plants
Integer programming
Descripción
Sumario:This paper addresses the problem of designing an optimal micro-hydro power installation in rivers with generic profiles, when micro-hydro schemes are studied. This is geared towards the application of Micro-Hydro Power Plants to supply marginal isolated areas using small Pelton wheels, where both technology and resources are limited. For this purpose, a model of a Pelton micro-hydro plant is first developed. Subsequently, a discretization of the river profile is made, on the basis of which a set of integer variables are proposed, being the model transformed then into an integer optimization problem. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is showed through a specific design problem. The application of the developed method is especially interesting when designing micro-hydro plants to provide electricity to isolated populations, where both technology and resources are limited.