Self-Scheduling of a Hydro Producer in a Pool-Based Electricity Market

This paper addresses the self-scheduling of a hydro generating company in a pool-based electricity market. This company comprises several cascaded plants along a river basin. The objective is to maximize the profit of the company from selling energy in the day-ahead market. This paper proposes a 0/1 mixed-integer linear programming (LP) model to account, in every plant, for the nonlinear and nonconcave three dimensional relationship between the power produced, the water discharged and the head of the associated reservoir. Additionally, startup costs due mainly to the wear and tear are considered. Finally, different realistic case studies are analyzed in detail.