Muwos - Multiple Use Water Optimization System for the Power Generation and Navigation Trade-Offs Analysis

Abstract

Reservoir operation is one of the major challenges in water resources planning and usually involves trading-off competing objectives. From the knowledge of the main water uses related to a hydro power plant, it is necessary to understand how energy uses impacts others and how energy use itself is impacted. Using the Tapajos River basin, Brazil, as a case study, this article aims to analyze water trade-offs between power generation and navigation uses, related to gains or losses of downstream water depth and of river convoy cargo capacity. The analysis of water conflicts was performed developing a nonlinear programming-based computational model called MUWOS (Multiple Use Water Optimization System), for conflict mitigation and minimization from the modeling and operational optimization of hydropower plants, for different navigation and hydrological scenarios. The result analysis showed that the main goals were achieved, evidencing that the research can aid the mitigating impacts process linked to hydro power projects for which navigation is an important economic aspect of the analyzed area. The method produced trade-off analyses and graphs, enabling verification of extent to which the prioritization of one use influences another use. The results obtained from the case study are consistent and useful for water management.

Keywords: Water management, Reservoir operation, Optimization, Nonlinear programming, Amazon