UC Santa Barbara

This paper presents a methodology to obtain optimal reservoir operation policies for a large‐ scale reservoir system. The model yields medium‐term (one‐year‐ahead) optimal release policies that allow the planning of activities within the current water year, with the possibility of updating preplanned activities to account for uncertain events that affect the state of the system. River flows are characterized as a multivariate autoregressive process and are forecasted using maximum likelihood estimators. The solution method is a sequential dynamic decomposition algorithm that keeps computational requirements and dimensionality problems at low levels. The model maximizes the system annual energy generation while satisfying constraints imposed on the operation of the reservoir network. Several alternative versions of the model are also presented, which can be used under different assumptions. The model is applied to a large‐scale multireservoir system, the northern portion of the California Central Valley Project. The optimal release policies show a potential increase in the system total annual energy with respect to heuristic schedules currently in use. Copyright 1985 by the American Geophysical Union.