Authors: T. Olason, F. Welt, D. Shields
Abstract
A decision support system is being developed for short-term (less than one week) optimization of hourly scheduling of generation and reservoir operations for the entire Manitoba Hydro hydroelectric generation system. Manitoba Hydro is a provincially owned utility, whose mandate is to supply the electricity needs of the province and to maximize export revenues from surplus energy through long- and short-term transaction opportunities with neighboring provinces and USA utilities. Transmission system limits and HVDC line losses are important considerations in the scheduling of generation and the Vista Decision Support System configuration includes detailed representation of both the hydroelectric generation facilities as well as the transmission system. Bi-directional line limits and HVdc line losses, which are a function of line load and valve group configuration, are explicitly represented within the optimization of generation.
Vista is now an integral part of operations and is used for a number of tasks. These include; hour ahead and day ahead capacity planning to provide information to the energy traders; scheduling of generation resources for the whole week for committed load, reporting on all generation plans inside the company and to external agencies. In the future, Vista will also be used for post-audits, outage planning and after the fact outage costing.
The paper describes the solutions that were developed during the course of the project and some of the challenges encountered during its implementation.
