A Black Box Technique for Determining the Efficiency Function of a Hydroelectric Storage Power Plant

Abstract

In the frame of hydro energy optimization an essential problem is to determine certain input parameters, e.g. the total efficiency functions of the power plant, the influx to the reservoir etc. In this paper we confine ourselves to describing a new technique for determining the efficiency function. The second problem is treated in [l0], [11]. In section 2 we give a basic mathematical model for hydro energy optimization, including the mathematical formulation of the hydrological background. In section 3 two failures for determining the efficiency function are sketched. In section 4 we present a special technique of least squares type. Actually, we have a set of measurements, where not only the measurements but also the measure points are subject to errors. Based on these measurements the efficiency function is determined. The standard nonlinear least squares technique does not cope with this problem. Hence, we use a generalized version proposed by Schwetlick/Tiller [12] in combination with regularization. Our technique was successfully applied to the storage plants Partenstein and Gosau, both situated in Upper Austria. This technique easily carries over to any other problem of this type, i.e., determining some “transfer function” by means of measurements, where the measure points are also subject to errors.