Research on Dynamic Programming Game Model for Hydropower Stations

In the condition of the electricity market, the benefit is the result of market gaming for hydropower stations with price-making ability. The traditional energy maximization model is not appropriate in this circumstance. To study long-term operation variation in the market, a dynamic programming game model of hydropower stations is proposed to obtain a Nash equilibrium solution in long-term time series. A dynamic programming algorithm iteratively solves the model. The proposed approach is applied to hydropower stations of Longtan, Xiaowan, and Goupitan in a hypothetical pure hydropower market. The results show that the dynamic programming game model clearly outperforms the energy maximization model in terms of hydropower station benefit, and the operation results differences using the game model and optimization model are analyzed. For the studied cascaded reservoirs, the benefit increasing percentages can be 4.1%–8.2% with 0.2%–3.8% energy loss in this hypothetical electricity market, comparing the game model to the energy maximization model.