Exploring the management policy of hydropower plants in the era of the uncertain energy market

Τhe water-energy nexus is characterized by synergies, complementarities and conflicts, and thus its management and operation is a demanding task. This is more challenging when its socioeconomic uncertainties are embedded. In this vein, this thesis focuses on the interactions of large-scale hydropower plants under the concept of water-energy-society nexus. In particular, we propose an uncertainty-aware methodology for the management’s optimization of multipurpose reservoirs and their assessment. Key drivers of this, are the estimation of water supply, the irrigation demands as well as the highly uncertain energy target at each time step. For the estimation of the two first elements, we employ a statistical analysis, while for the latter we adopt a copula-based approach, in which the energy target is correlated with the day-ahead energy price. In addition, an ensemble of synthetic energy price is created, by employing stochastic model in order to implement the uncertainty analysis. As a proof of concept, we are taking advantage of the Plastiras reservoir, Greece, which is a challenging hydropower plant, due to its socioeconomic conflicts. To stress-test the proposed framework and to compare its performance, we make the hypothesis that this plant is working under the energy market of Portugal and Greece.