Optimal Hydropower Reservoir Operation with Environmental Requirements

i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am thankful to my Committee Members for their contributions to this dissertation. I am most grateful to my major Professor, Jay Lund, for his enthusiastic guidance and endless ideas during these four years. His sense of humor contributed to having a pleasant work environment. I am indebted to Professor Richard Howitt for his valuable comments and for providing the computational codes that were the basis for some of the models included in this work. Professor Jeffrey Mount contributed with a complete review of this dissertation and useful comments. Thanks to Professor Yueyue Fan for pointing out some technical limitations of this work and suggesting additional analyses. I want to thank late Professor Charles ReVelle, my first graduate advisor at Johns Hopkins University, for his incredible academic and personal support during my first year of graduate studies. I am also thankful to Professor Fabián Bombardelli, for his sincere friendship and opportune professional advice. My graduate experience at UC Davis was enriched by the interaction with my fellow members of Lund's research group. Among them, I would like to mention Special thanks to Josué Medellín for his friendship, generosity and professional advice. Thanks to Carlos Zuritz for all those coffee breaks. Other people whose discussions contributed to improve this work are Mike Deas, Funding for my doctoral studies was provided by several institutions, including the Fulbright Commission, the Chilean Government, and the Resources Legacy Fund through the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. Most important, I am deeply grateful to my family. I would like to thank my wife, Andrea, for her constant support, love and dedication. Thanks for turning these years into a beautiful adventure. Thanks to my son, Rafael, for blessing me with his smile and for his first steps. I am grateful to my brother, Sebastián, for his encouraging words from the distance. Finally, I want express my gratitude to my parents, Juan and María Elvira, for wisely providing the best opportunities in the world. I would have never accomplished this had they not put their children's happiness above their own. Abstract Engineering solutions to the environmental impacts of hydropower operations on downstream aquatic ecosystem are studied using revenue-driven optimization models. Peaking hydropower operations affect stream ecosystems by abruptly changing flow conditions. Operations are often restricted by minimum releases to a sensitive stream and maximum rates of change, or ramping rates, of releases. These constraints potentially …