REAL-TIME OPTIMIZATION OF A HYDROELECTRIC POWER-PLANT

An optimal control problem modelling a hydroelectric power plant was developed and discussed by Hj. Wacker and his co-workers in [ 1]. In the present paper, this problem is treated within a more general framework of ''non-differentiable'' optimal control problems. Necessary conditions of optimality are derived and it is proven that the restricted class of controls considered in [1] indeed contains the optimal control. Furthermore, a decoupling technique is established that allows the full problem to be split into several small subproblems. Based on the new results, an efficient algorithm is developed. This algorithm allows the optimal control to be computed for more general problems with greater accuracy and for a longer time period. Numerical results are given both for the model described in [1] and for the more refined model presented in this paper.