Modelling of Environmental Constraints for Hydropower Optimization Problems – a Review

Hydropower plants and reservoirs can have negative impacts on their surrounding ecosystems. To limit such impacts, environmental regulations may be imposed. This paper provides a review of literature on the most commonly used environmental constrains in scheduling of hydro-dominated systems and proposed constraints for future market conditions. Furthermore, we review literature on how environmental constraints are included in hydropower scheduling methods and discuss the main modelling challenges. We find an increasing interest in modelling of environmental constraints in recent literature, and conclude by highlighting challenges to improving the representation of environmental regulations in hydropower scheduling models.