An MILP-based model for short-term peak shaving operation of pumped-storage hydropower plants serving multiple power grids

China's power grids have constructed many large pumped-storage hydropower plants (PSHPs) to relieve their increasing peak shaving pressure. Unlike PSHPs in a single power grid, the PSHPs directly operated by the dispatch center of regional power grids are required to simultaneously provide peak regulation services for several subordinate provincial power grids. This makes the daily operation of these PSHPs very challenging for both system operators and researchers. Hence, this paper develops a Mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) based model for determining the optimal hourly scheduling of PSHPs serving several provincial power grids. The objective is to minimize the peak-valley difference of the residual load series of each power grid. The performance of individual units in the model will be considered, as well as the head effect for each unit in both generating mode and pumping mode. The study focuses mainly on the linearization of the commonly-used nonlinear objective function, constraints on the operation status of units, and turbine performance curves. These nonlinearities are then linearized with the aid of binary integer variables. The optimization results obtained from two real-world case studies are used to demonstrate that the proposed model is computationally efficient and shows good performance in relieving the peak regulation pressure of each power grid. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.