Capacity expansion of linked reservoir systems

A procedure is presented for the analysis of time phasing of reservoir system development. The formulation is based on a multi-purpose reservoir model with stochastic inflows. The object is to select the reservoir sizing, timing of expansion and to establish operating policies such that the total cost associated with the system of linked reservoirs is minimized. The capacity expansion aspect is formulated as a mixed integer continuous linear programming problem. Due to the resulting problem size and its general structure, Benders' decomposition is applied. A numerical example illustrating the procedure is given.