Optimising a cascade of hydroelectric power stations with the WOLF package

Original free-surface flow solvers have been developed by the HACH during the
last years. The resulting fully integrated WOLF package allows engineers to
study a very wide range of free surface flows situations. Successful and accurate
computations are performed for phenomena as various as hydrological run-offs
and dam breaking in quasi 3 dimensions including solid transport effects, as well
as rivers networks modelling with explicit exchanges between river paths.
All the models, physically based, use efficient and original numerical
methods to solve continuous or discontinuous free-surface flow equations. They
handle structured or unstructured grids with both first and second order accurate
explicit or implicit algorithms in time and space. WOLF also includes powerful
user-friendly pre- and post-processing with 2D and 3D animated visualizations
as well as a parameters optimization software interconnected with all the
package components and based on the innovating method of genetic algorithms.
In this paper, the production of the hydroelectric power plants installed on a
60 km long section of the rivers Amblève and Warche in Belgium is presented in
details to illustrate the numerical calculation and optimization process. The river
network is modeled using real natural topographic data.
Hydrological balance is closed and roughness coefficients are calibrated
from water level and discharge field measurements. Hydroelectric production is
optimized by an automatic calibration of the parameters of the hydrogram
injected in the network from the Robertville dam.
This approach leads to a substantial gain in both hydroelectric production
and financial benefits and deals with all management and security criteria.