maximum level of the reservoir, in order to avoid flooding of such
populated areas. This current scenario and taken into account in the
optimal operating model presented in this article.
In this case study, the simulations are initially performed for the
annual operation of a non-optimized plant, defined as the base case,
to be used as reference for the next simulation. In this case, it is
considered a fixed number of turbines in operation.
The tidal model used corresponds to data of tidal harmonic
components in marine terminal of Ponta da Madeira, due to its
proximity to the estuary of Bacanga, and its use may be appropriate
for this research. Studies on the harmonic analysis of the tides in
the marine terminal of Ponta da Madeira can be found in Ref. [4].
Through a simple iterative process, the series created was synchronized
with the tidal data set for the year 2012, available online
at Tide Tables charts [27]. Fig. 9 shows a time series that represents
the tide variation for the first 720 h of the year 2012, as result of (6).
Note that this model is quite close to the data from tide charts of the
Brazilian Navy [27].
Through studies of bathymetry in the estuary, it is possible to
obtain a relationship between the volume of the reservoir and its
respective level. This work used bathymetric data obtained in 2012
for Bacanga estuary, available in Ref. [28].
For the analyses performed in this study, some typical parameters
of a hypothetical Kaplan turbine with nominal flow rate of
86 m3
/s and the minimum and maximum flow rate are 39 and
95 m3
/s, respectively were used. The minimum and nominal
operational head of the turbine are 1 m and 5 m, respectively. The
diameter of the turbine rotor and the hub are 3.72 m and 1.64 m,
respectively. Power generated at nominal operating conditions is
3.9 MW.