Performance evaluation and benchmarking to inform dispatching rules for hydropower plants

Hydropower currently generates more than all other renewable energies combined. Considering the challenges of climate change and the transition to green energy, it is expected to remain the world’s largest source of renewable electricity generation. This paper proposes a tool for performance evaluation and benchmarking of hydropower generation to inform dispatching. Through them, strengths and weaknesses of asset operations can be set, identifying areas with the best performance, gathering insights from their strategies and best practices, and comprehending factors that lead to variations in performance levels. The results allow for optimising energy resource use by indicating the dispatching rules with maximum power production and minimum wear-and-tear impact. This framework allows the formulation of practical guidelines for dispatching policies. The proposed methodology is applied to analyse two real-world case studies: the Vogelgrün run of river hydropower plant (France) and the Frades 2 pump-storage powerplant (Portugal).