Modeling Energy Availability in Small Hydro Power Plants for Generation Reliability Assessment

This paper provides a model for assessing the accessibility of Small Hydroelectric Plants For Generating (SHPPs), which may be used in generation system reliability as well as generational planing studies. The model takes into account the uncertainty of river inputs and the functioning of generating units. A multiple stages Markov chain is used to represent the river input as a chaotic stationary series, whereas a two states Markov model is used to simulate the generating unit. The use of the statistical clustering methods K-means in two distinct strategies: inflow clustering and power clustering, reduces the huge number of diverse inflow values. The solution of the stochastic system is used to determine the steady state probability of each power production value of the SHPP. Because the model includes the river inflow fluctuation and the generating unit operation, the anticipated value of the SHPP's yearly power production, the duration curve, and many reliability indices are estimated more accurately than traditional methods. The article presents results produced using real brazilian river inflows utilized for SHPP production, demonstrating the accuracy and validation of the proposed technique for dependability assessment.