Value of Medium-range Precipitation Forecasts in Inflow Prediction and Hydropower Optimization

This paper presents an inflow-forecasting model and a Piecewise Stochastic Dynamic Programming model (PSDP) to investigate the value of the Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts (QPFs) comprehensively. Recently medium-range quantitative precipitation forecasts are addressed to improve inflow forecasts accuracy. Revising the Ertan operation, a simple hydrological model is proposed to predict 10-day average inflow into the Ertan dam using GFS-QPFs of 10-day total precipitation during wet season firstly. Results show that the reduction of average absolute errors (ABE) is of the order of 15% and the improvement in other statistics is similar, compared with those from the currently used AR model. Then an improved PSDP is proposed to generate monthly or 10-day operating policies to incorporate forecasts with various lead-times as hydrologic state variables. Finally performance of the PSDP is compared with alternative SDP models to evaluate the value of the GFS-QPFs in hydropower generation. The simulation results demonstrate that including the GFS-QPFs is beneficial to the Ertan reservoir inflow forecasting and hydropower generation dispatch. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010