Evaluation of reservoir operation schemes: from rule curve to many-objective optimisation

Quantitative comparisons of different reservoir operation schemes can provide valuable suggestions for decision making and help to promote new planning tools under changing environments. The full spectrum of reservoir operation schemes (rule-curve-based setup (RBS), single-objective optimisation setup (SOS), bi-objective optimisation setup (BOS) and many-objective optimisation setup (MOS)) was considered in this work. A large reservoir in the southwest of China (Qinshitan reservoir) was used as a case study. The four reservoir operation schemes were established using similar formulations and were evaluated quantitatively under typical hydrological years. For the considered optimisation problem, progressive improvement on the solution was obtained from RBS to SOS, then BOS and finally MOS. Among the models, the MOS provided a comprehensive perspective on reservoir operation and achieved the best performance in terms of offering the most options for decision making. The MOS also discovered a step-wise operational scheme that had not been captured by the RBS, the SOS or the BOS.