The Hydropower—Schedule rule allows you to define a regular monthly or user specified seasonally varying hydropower requirement. The various options on this rule editor ("Figure: Hydropower - Schedule Rule Editor") allow you to define each month's or season's power generation requirement, the type of the requirement (megawatt-hours or plant factor), and the hours of the day and days of the week during which the plant can generate.

Figure: Hydropower - Schedule Rule Editor

  • Power Generation Requirement—click the Options button to open the Power Generation Requirement editor ("Figure: Power Generation Requirement Options").

    Figure: Power Generation Requirement Options


  • Requirement Varies is the option for interval in which you want to specify the requirement. Your options are: Monthly and Seasonally. The remaining attributes on this editor define what the requirement values mean (Requirement Specification) and how they are to be met (Period over which Generation Requirement is satisfied).

    • Requirement Specification

      • Requirement Specified as: is the list of options for describing the values in the Power Generation Requirement table. The options include:

        • Plant Factor—Monthly or Seasonal Total—this means that the requirement values in the table are in units of plant factor and represent a total energy requirement for the Month or Season assuming that the plant ran all the time at the specified fraction of capacity (or ran at full capacity for the specified fraction of the total time). No matter how you phrase it, this specification can be translated into a quantity of energy in MWHs. How the plant actually generates is a function of the power generation pattern.

        • Daily Total MWH—this option indicates that the values in the requirement table identify how much energy must be generated each day of the month or season.

        • Weekly Total MWH—this option indicates that the values in the requirement table identify how much energy must be generated each week of the month or season. If you select this option, you must also specify the attributes: Starting Day and Week belongs to a month (or season) when this day is in the month.

        • Monthly (or Seasonal) Total MWH—this option indicates that the values in the requirement table identify how much total energy must be generated over the current month (or season).

        • Starting Day—this is the first day of the week, when Weekly Total is selected for Requirement Specified as.

        • Week belongs to a month (season) when this day is in the month (season). This field identifies a day of the week that must be in the season so that the whole week can belong to the current month (season) or to the next month (season)—when Weekly Total is selected for Requirement Specified as.
          For example, if the Requirement is specified as a Weekly Total that varies Monthly, and the week Starts on Sunday and the Week belongs to…day is Wednesday, then if the current month is the one shown in "Figure: An Example Month", then the week that starts on Sunday the 28th belongs to the next month because the following Wednesday is in the next month.

          Figure: An Example Month

    • Period over which Generation Requirement will be satisfied

      • Period—all of the options for Requirement Specified as are period total values. That means that if your timestep is less than the period total, which it probably is, then the requirement is divided up across the timesteps of the total period based on the power generation pattern, and each timestep is assigned is shared of the total requirement. As each timestep is computed, if that timestep cannot meet its allotted portion of the total requirement, your selection for the Period over which Generation Requirement will be satisfied will determine how or if the unmet requirement will be satisfied. The Period options include:

        • Each Timestep—with this option, the energy requirement is distributed to all timesteps of the total period based on the power generation pattern. If a given timestep doesn't meet its allotted requirement, the unmet portion will remain unmet.

        • Daily—with this option, if your timestep is less than 1DAY, then the total energy requirement is distributed to the days across the total period, then across the day to the timesteps of the day—all based on the power generation pattern. If a given timestep cannot meet its allotted requirement, the unmet portion of the day's requirement is redistributed to the remaining timesteps of the day, per the generation pattern. If the remaining timesteps cannot meeting that day's allotted requirement, the requirement will remain unmet.

        • Weekly—with this option, the total energy requirement is distributed to the weeks across the total period, then the week's allotment is distributed to the timesteps of the week—all based on the power generation pattern. If a given timestep cannot meet its allotted requirement, the unmet portion of the week's requirement is redistributed to the remaining timesteps of the week, per the generation pattern. If the remaining timesteps cannot meeting that week's allotted requirement, the requirement will remain unmet. If you select Weekly, you must also specify the Starting Day of Period

      • Starting Day of Period—this is the starting day of the week over which the requirement is to be satisfied. This option is only required if the Period over which Generation Requirement will be satisfied is Weekly.

    • Power Generation Requirement table—Complete the power requirement table as appropriate, depending on the options selected Power Generation Requirement editor. For example, if Monthly Total MWH was selected, then enter the total monthly requirement for each month of the year in the table.

    • Power Generation Pattern—this button will open the Power Generation Pattern editor. The Power Generation Pattern Is used by the rule to distribute the power requirement to the weeks, days, and timesteps in the period. Please see "Power Generation Pattern" for a full description of the purpose of the Power Generation Pattern and options for defining it using the Power Generation Pattern editor.