Optimal discharge policy of multi-reservoir linked system using successive variations

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Abstract
‘Dynamic programming’ (DP) formulations for determining complex operating (discharge) policies encounter either major computational requirements or they fail to yield optimal results. A sequential method has been developed in which the discharges are successively transferred between stages one reservoir at a time (alone or with related discharges) within a number of constraints to optimize the objective function over the given time horizon. The method, which is easy to implement, uses the concept of transfer-gain. Discretization of the control variables is not needed. All series-parallel configurations are taken care of. Any initial feasible policy converges to the optimal one with very little computational effort, and for linear objective functions results can be obtained even without using a digital computer. Examples have been worked out with linear and non-linear performance criteria.