This paper presents some results related to the operation of the Itaipu hydropowerplant. Itaipu is one of the largest hydropower plants in the world. It is a binationalundertaking run by Brazil and Paraguay at the Paraná River on the border sectionbetween the two countries. Each country owns 50% of the installed capacity (14,000MW). This study evaluates the impacts of the upstream storage reservoirs on thehydropower production of Itaipu. The analysis involves a system of 55 hydropowerplants. Itaipu hydropower plant operates as a run-of-river reservoir and itself does nothave storage capacity. However, there are many upstream storage reservoirs locatedin Brazil. The analysis is conducted using the HIDROTERM decision support system(DSS), which is basically an optimization model. HIDROTERM is designed for themanagement and operation of large hydrothermal systems. In its formulation thehydro plants are considered individually and the thermal plants are aggregated intosubsystems. The optimization model is capable of handling different types ofconstraints, such as water transfers, multiple purposes and environmentalrequirements. Its objective function is to produce energy at a minimum cost.HIDROTERM integrates a database with basic information (hydrological andtechnical) to run the model and an interface to manage input and output data. Theoptimization model is written using the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS)package and so it can run with different nonlinear programming (NLP) routines. Theresults from the analysis show that the upstream reservoirs located in Brazil havesignificant impacts on the hydropower production of Itaipu.
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