Applying Simulated Annealing For Optimal Operation of Multi-Reservoir Systems

The need to optimize the operation of water reservoirs is an issue that is becoming increasingly a concern for water resources planners in developing countries. This issue particularly becomes more significant in large systems with multiple reservoirs where operation of one reservoir has an impact on the others. In other word, the set of reservoirs in these systems act like a united series and require specific methods to handle various modeling issues. <b>Problem statement:</b> Sirvan River basin in west of Iran, standing in fifth order in respect of discharge, is an example of such a complex system. The project of water transfer from western tropical regions which is one of the large-scale projects in water resources management in Middle East, consists of a number of reservoirs and transfer systems. The matter of optimum operation of such a collection is one of the complicated and outstanding issues in water resources management.<b> Approach:</b> It was found that, due to increasing decision-making variables, conventional models used in optimizing water resources systems were not any longer capable of obtaining a desired solution, either because of low precision or time constraints. Hence, the intelligent random research approach "Simulated Annealing" has been used which in recent, decades has revealed appropriate results in solving major problems. <b>Results:</b> The results of this research indicate that the annealing approach is capable of solving such complex problems in water resources management with good precision in a reasonable period of time. <b>Conclusions/Recommendations:</b> The results were also compared with outputs of MODSIM which is a widely known model for solving complex water resources systems problems and benefits from "out of kilter"algorithm. The results indicate SA as a very robust and effective model in optimization of large real multi-reservoir systems.