Abstract
As we move towards electrical networks with a growing presence of renewable generation, the representation of the electrical components becomes more important. In hydro-dominated power systems, modelling the forbidden zones of hydro plants becomes increasingly challenging as the number of plants increases. Such zones are ranges of generation that either should be avoided or are altogether unreachable. However, because representing the forbidden zones introduces a substantial computational burden, hydrothermal unit-commitment problems (HTUC) for large systems are usually formulated ignoring the forbidden zones. Nonetheless, this simplification may demand adjustments to the solution of the HTUC, because the generation of the hydro stations may fall in forbidden zones. In practice, the adjustments are usually performed based on the experience of system operators and, then, can be far from an optimal correction. In this paper, we study the impact of explicitly representing the hydro-generation forbidden zones in a large-scale system with more than 7000 buses, 10,000 lines, and 700 hydro units. Our findings show that the simplified model that is current used can deviate significantly from the model with forbidden zones, both in terms of the generation of hydro plants, as well as the generation of thermal plants and the system marginal costs.