Optimum Management of Dams Reservoirs Using Heuristic Optimization Methods: A Case study: Mahabd Reservoir Dam

Problems of water delivery scheduling are one of the reasons for poor performance of the Optimization operation of water resources projects. These problems lead to high operational losses and miss-match of water delivery with water requirements. A great Number of studies have been conducted in quest of suitable methods capable of handling such problems. In recent years, some new heuristic methods such as particle swarm optimization and Genetic Algorithms have been introduced in systems engineering. Preliminary applications of these methods in water resources problems have shown that some of them are powerful tools, capable of solving complex problems. In this paper, the application of such heuristic methods as Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) has been studied for optimizing reservoir operation. The fitness function is minimizing the difference between monthly release and downstream demand for water with regard to establishing the continuity equal was selected. The methods were applied and compared using short-term (one year) model. Comparison of the results showed that PSO than GA is better capability in finding global optimum Solutions and operating curves.