Optimal Short-Term Coordination of Desalination, Hydro and Thermal Units

The fossil fuels consumption is rapidly growing due to increased water and electricity demands. An interconnected water-energy nexus is generally composed of thermal power plants, combined potable water and power (CWP) generation units, and desalination only processes. Hence, participation of hydro power plants in electricity generation facilities not only reduces the total fuel consumption of the thermal generators and CWP units, but also mitigates the greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, CWP producers reduces the fossil fuels consumption of the conventional thermal power plants and desalination only units, especially when the water treatment and the power generation capacities of the desalination only processes and the conventional thermal units are insufficient for satisfying on-peak potable water and electricity demands. Hence, the main objective of the current paper is to schedule the water-power hub networks in the presence of the hydro units. The generalized algebraic mathematical modeling system is used to model the proposed method as the mixed-integer non-linear program. The on/off status of the units, the value of the power generation of the thermal/hydro/CWP units, the volume of the water produced by the CWP/desalination units are selected as the decision variables of the optimization problem. The sum of the fuel cost of mentioned units is minimized as the single objective function. The optimization constraints consist of the ramp up and down rates of thermal units, water and electricity generation capacities, balance constraints, relationship between the water head, spilled and released water of the reservoirs with output power of hydro power plants.