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

Abstract

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.