| Summary: | The electricity supply market is rapidly changing from a monopolistic to a competitive
environment. Being able to operate their system of reservoirs and generating facilities to get
maximum benefits out of existing assets and resources is important to the British Columbia
Hydro Authority (B.C. Hydro). A decision support system has been developed to help B.C.
Hydro operate their system in an optimal way. The system is operational and is one of the
tools that are currently used by the B.C. Hydro system operations engineers to determine
optimal schedules that meet the hourly domestic load and also maximize the value B.C.
Hydro obtains from spot transactions in the Western U.S. and Alberta electricity markets.
This dissertation describes the development and implementation of the decision support
system in production mode. The decision support system consists of six components: the
input data preparation routines, the graphical user interface (GUI), the communication
protocols, the hydraulic simulation model, the optimization model, and the results display
software.
A major part of this work involved the development and implementation of a practical and
detailed large-scale optimization model that determines the optimal tradeoff between the
long-term value of water and the returns from spot trading transactions in real-time
operations. The postmortem-testing phase showed that the gains in value from using the
model accounted for 0.25% to 1.0% o f the revenues obtained. The financial returns from
using the decision support system greatly outweigh the costs of building it. Other benefits are
the savings in the time needed to prepare the generation and trading schedules. The system
operations engineers now can use the time saved to focus on other important aspects of their
job. The operators are currently experimenting with the system in production mode, and are
gradually gaining confidence that the advice it provides is accurate, reliable and sensible. The
main lesson learned from developing and implementing the system was that there is no
alternative to working very closely with the intended end-users of the system, and with the
people who have deep knowledge, experience and understanding of how the system is and
should be operated. === Applied Science, Faculty of === Civil Engineering, Department of === Graduate
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