LAUSR

As specified from the marketing standpoint, firm hydro-electrical energy must be available on an assured basis. To achieve the firm energy yield at maximum level, simultaneous optimization of operational variables is utilized. The variables include reservoir releases over historical stream-inflow records as well as the plant factor. Here, the plant factor denotes the percentage of day for operating a peak-time power plant at full capacity. To this end, a differential evaluation (DE) algorithm equipped with an indirect constraint handling is employed, in which an adaptive penalty system imposes the desirable reliability and preserves the total energy generation. To implement the model for a real example, a reservoir dam named Karun4, in southwest of Iran, is applied. The experimental results show the firm energy produced by the current and developed method are 49.2 and 127.5 (109 watt hours), respectively. Also, the results reveal the maximum capability of generating the firm energy yield with target reliability whereas the total energy generation is preserving.