Title: Production planning under uncertainty: the case of hydrothermal systems

Authors: Tarik Aouam

Addresses: Engineering Systems Management Program, College of Engineering, American University of Sharjah, PO Box 26666, Sharjah, UAE

Abstract: This paper formulates the hydrothermal production planning problem as a multi-stage stochastic programming model. This problem is usually solved using algorithms that are based on dynamic programming and nested Benders decomposition (NBD). The hydrothermal planning problem is remodelled as a capacitated production planning model with convex costs; then a vanishing effect property of the first period decision is derived. Based on this property, a special implementation scheme of the NBD algorithm is proposed, providing faster convergence and less computational effort. The NBD algorithm is implemented for a large-scale hydrothermal power system of the Pacific Northwest in the USA with 20 thermal plants and 21 thermal plants.

Keywords: production planning; stochastic programming; hydrothermal planning; dynamic programming; Benders decomposition; uncertainty; hydrothermal power plants.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAOM.2013.055867

International Journal of Advanced Operations Management, 2013 Vol.5 No.3, pp.221 - 236

Received: 08 Feb 2012
Accepted: 26 May 2012
Published online: 28 Apr 2014 *

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