Dynamic Management of Hydropower-Irrigation Systems

This chapter compares the performance of static and dynamic management strategies for a water resources system characterized by important hydropower and agricultural sectors. In the dynamic approach, water for crop irrigation is no longer considered as a static asset but is rather allocated so as to maximize the overall benefits taking into account the latest hydrologic conditions and the productivities of other users throughout the basin. The complexity of the decision-making process, which requires the continuous evaluation of numerous trade-offs, calls for the use of integrated hydrologic-economic models. The two water resources allocation problems discussed in this paper are solved using stochastic dual dynamic programming formulations.