A tool for online operational optimisation for hydro power plants Veeramani C, Thirugnanam D, Gayatri S Corporate R&D division; Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited; Vikas Nagar; Hyderabad; INDIA Abstract Hydro Power Stations will have multiple units of same or different capacities. Further each unit may have different generation capabilities, depending on the machine conditions. In order to operate the station at maximum efficiency, the individual units need to run at optimum level depending on unit constraints such as its availability, spill over criteria, permissible min/max reservoir head. A software solution has been attempted here, to optimise the Hydro Power station operation taking all the constraints in to account and load demand from Load Dispatch Centre. The optimisation philosophy aims at attaining maximum station efficiency by calculating the load scheduling through the software for the available units while meeting the load demand from load despatch centre. This has been configured and tested for a specific hydro station having three Pelton Turbines with the capacity of 40MW each. One of the major inputs for the plant optimisation is the reservoir inflow, which is the resource for hydro power generation. The reservoir inflow is predicted by configuring Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model using Neuro Solutions software with TanhAxon transfer function. The model has been trained using 25years historical data of the inflow in to the reservoir. The software is designed to display load schedule to the operator for maximising the station efficiency.The GUI have been made user friendly so as to guide and help the operator. The software may also be customised for any Hydro station by changing the respective station parameters. Top Keywords Hydro Power, Reservoir flow, Plant Optimisation, Unit constraints, Pelton Turbine. Top |