Optimal Scheduling of a Binary Pumped-Storage Hydro Plant Modeling the Short-Circuit Flow

Abstract

This study introduces a mixed-integer linear programming model for the hourly scheduling of a closed-loop, price-taker pumped-storage hydropower plant (PSHP) operating under hydraulic short-circuit (SC) mode. The plant is assumed to participate in the day-ahead and secondary regulation reserve markets. The turbine input-output relation is represented through a two-segment linear curve that is updated iteratively as a function of the net head. Although the formulation is general, it has been tested with real prices from the Spanish electricity market, taking into account the current market design, which involves different auctions for upward and downward regulation reserves. The proposed formulation explicitly models the SC water flow. The model has been used to compare the plant’s revenue with and without the hydraulic SC, and the results show that its implementation increases the plant’s market revenues.