• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.281-289
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• 1999

Small-scale hydropower projects at existing agricultural reservoirs can contribute to produce electric energy by maximizing the use of releases from the reservoirs. The irrigation water duration, the reservoir hydropower simulation, and the nonlinear programming model are employed to estimate potential hydroelectric energy at an existing reservoir. The nonlinear programming model consists of finding a maximum hydroelectric energy subject to irrigation water demand constraints. The sample reservoir given a set of inflow and irrigation water is considered. The optimal solutions by the optimization model yield the most hydroelectric energy for the analysis period in the three methods. Consequently, the nonlinear programming model uses the most water for hydropower generation with respect to the total inflow of the sample reservoir. It is also found that additional storage by increasing the normal water level of the sample reservoir does not significantly increase the annual hydroelectric energy for the given reservoir. It is expected that the optimization model and the proposed procedure for estimating potential hydroelectric energy can be applied to evaluate feasibility analysis for small scale hydropower additions at existing agricultural dams.