Constellation, le dépôt institutionnel de l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Résumé

The authors investigate the complexity needed in the structure of the scenario trees to maximize energy production in a rolling-horizon framework. Three comparisons, applied to the stochastic short-term unit commitment and loading problem are conducted. The first one involves generating a set of scenario trees built from inflow forecast data over a rolling-horizon. The second replaces the entire set of scenario trees by the median scenario. The third replaces the set of trees by scenario fans. The method used to build scenario trees, based on minimization of the nested distance, requires three parameters: number of stages, number of child nodes at each stage, and aggregation of the period covered by each stage. The authors formulate the question of finding the best values of these parameters as a blackbox optimization problem that maximizes the energy production over the rolling-horizon. Numerical experiments on three hydropower plants in series suggest that using a set of scenario trees is preferable to using the median scenario, but using a fan of scenarios yields a comparable solution with less computational effort.