Optimal utilization of DEZ dam reservoir considering drinking water demand by dynamic programming technique

Abstract

One of the elements of water resources management is optimal operation of country dam’s reservoirs as the main sources of surface water. Usually in the operation of reservoir drinking water the main goal is to minimize the downstream requirements differences and improve released water. In this study, dynamic programming backward-based approach is used to determine water release value to optimize the operation of DEZ Dam Reservoir. The data analysis process is dynamically addressed on the MATLAB programming environment and using software such as Excel spreadsheets. In order to solve reservoir operation problem, stored values at the end of period t is intended as a decision variable. According to problem definition, the possibility to change this variable in the range of (830, 3340) is available. Meanwhile, obtained solutions accuracy as well as objective function value depends on discretization of decision variables. Initially, in order to display the model sufficiency, operation is considered for 5 years, 20 years and 40 year with interval length of 251 units and objective function value is obtained as 1.13, 6.85 and 14.82 for 5, 20 and 40 year operations, respectively. Finally, to assess dynamic programming method performance in solving optimal operation of reservoirs problem, corresponding results are compared with recent conventional meta-heuristic methods results and their performance are presented.