Joint Operation of Cascade Reservoirs' Hydropower Generation in the Upper Yantze River Reach *

rd , 2012; revised: Dec. 13 th , 2012; accepted: Dec. 29 th , 2012 Abstract: Along with the Jinsha River downstream cascade built and put into operation, the comprehensive control pattern of the Yangtze River valley cascade reservoirs will be changed, and the original single power station has been difficult to conventional power generation scheduling scheme optimum. So Joint Operation of Hydropower Generation for multi-reservoir of Upper Yangtze River in China was studied in this paper. Choosing maximum hydropower generation as objective function under the considering firm power, a opti- mal model were established for joint operation of Upper Yangtze River, the model was solved by improved particle swarm optimization. The result shows that compared with the conventional dispatching the joint op- timal dispatching of six reservoirs could Sends more electricity, creating better economic benefits, satisfying the demand of power system load better, and improving Water resources utilization effectively; and compared with the individual operation of three Gorges cascade, the power generation of three Gorges cascade in- creases 25.41 kWh, growing rate run at 3.05%. The compensation benefit of the Three Gorges cascade is sig- nificant.