Development of an optimal reservoir pumping operation for adaptation to climate change

Abstract

Optimization of operation rule curve of Layang reservoir located in southern part of peninsular Malaysia under climate change uncertainties has been presented in this study. Downscaled climate data were incorporated in a lumped rainfall-runoff model to project daily reservoir inflow, which was then used to determine the reservoir operation rule curves to minimize the operation cost. The results reveal that climatic change will cause a rise of temperature in the range of 1.5-2.9°C, but decrease in rainfall in most of the months in the end of this century which will casue a change in the seasonal pattern of inflow to reservoir. Comparison of historical and model generated operation costs indicates that annual savings of 23% and 33% is possible with optimized reservoir operation rule curves. Assessment of the performance of the optimized operation curve under climate change scenarios shows that it will be able to cope with the changing pattern of reservoir inflow with proper adjustment. It is expected that the method presented in this paper to derive pumping operation curves to optimize the total volume of water to be pumped from various sources to reservoir can be useful for reservoir operators in the context of climate change.