Version 15.1 – October 2018 www.psr-inc.com Contact: sddp@psr-inc.

com

SDDP VERSION 15.1

New features

Update of the Xpress optimization package for version 8.5

The new version of the Xpress optimization package presents several enhancements that could result
in faster and more robust executions, especially for the solution of problems with hourly representa-
tion.

Reorganization of the reserve data

All screens related to reserve definition were grouped in the “Reserve” section in “Complementary
data” and their names were updated as follows:

Other new features

• Hydro plant modification data: the total outflow x tailwater elevation table may now be modified
in time.
 SDDP VERSION 15.0

New features

Hourly representation: planning the operation details at each stage

The increasing economic competitiveness of wind, biomass and solar generation sources has attracted
a great deal of attention worldwide. Therefore, it is important to have a more detailed system repre-
sentation in both scheduling and planning studies. SDDP can now represent all decision variables and
constraints with hourly resolution. Solving these hourly problems efficiently was a challenging task
that required new algorithms and procedures to ensure the solution quality while keeping the com-
putational times acceptable. Additionally, both input and output data were carefully designed to be
flexible and easily handled.

For further details, please refer to the “SDDP 15.0 - Hourly representation” report.

Batteries
Due to technological and manufacturing advances, the cost of batteries has substantially decreased.
As a consequence, those devices are increasingly being used to smooth out the short-term variability
of intermittent renewable sources or as an alternative to expensive standby peaking units. Future
applications include the operation of distributed generation grids, for example, performed by flexibil-
ity aggregators.

SDDP now explicitly models the operation of fast response energy storage devices connected to the
grid considering hourly time steps.

Renewable stations
Analogously to the hydro gauging stations, renewable scenarios are now associated to new elements
called “renewable stations” and each renewable plant must be associated to one of them. Plants with
similar generation patterns can be associated to the same station.

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 Dashboard for comparing SDDP results
SDDP has a new tool to compare results from the current run to those of previous runs. The dashboard
includes the comparison of: (i) total operating costs breakdown; (ii) load marginal costs per system;
(iii) deficit risks in each system; (iv) total energy produced by each technology; etc. The result compar-
ison dashboard can be shared via an internet link.

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 A more user-friendly “Output in worksheets” screen is now available!
The “Output in worksheets” selection screen has been completed redesigned. It is now possible to
apply filters accordingly to the type, class, name or unit of the outputs and/or perform an interactive
search of the desired outputs. In addition, the descriptions of all outputs have been moved from the
SDDP User’s Manual to this screen to facilitate the identification of the most helpful outputs for each
application.

New outputs and new macro agent

• New outputs have been created:

• Hydro: “Accumulated production factor”;

• Hourly representation: “Thermal commitment decision” and “Thermal start-up decision”;

• Renewable sources: “Renewable generation (p.u.)” and “Renewable sampled scenarios”;

• Batteries: “Battery net generation”, “Battery stored energy”, “Battery storage marginal cost”
and “Battery capacity marginal cost”;

• Renewable and thermal minimum generation curtailment: “Generation excess per system”
and “Generation excess per bus”.

• New macro agent “TotalBatt”: for the visualization of the aggregated results associated to all bat-
teries.

Automation scheme
A new general scheme has been implemented to automate the execution of any user-defined process
right after a successful SDDP execution is finished. In this scheme, the main SDDP batch file
(“sddp.bat”) has been changed to automatically call another batch called “post-run.bat” passing as
argument the path of the executed case. The users can then call from the “post-run.bat” the execu-
tion of their custom program(s). This scheme can be used for automatically and directly (i) calling the
GRAPH module, (ii) converting binary files to CSV files, or (iii) calling any script or executable of inter-
est. Let your imagination run wild!

For further details, please refer to the SDDP User’s Manual.

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 Implementation enhancements
• Memory management: several internal memory structures to store SDDP’s input/output and al-
gorithm data have been redesigned to reduce the amount of the required memory used during
each execution. This implementation is very important, especially for cases with hourly represen-
tation, because more memory is now available to the optimization solver solution process. More-
over, more memory available also means that more processes can run in parallel at same time.
The new version requires, in average, 600 MB less RAM memory than the previous one (more than
30% reduction).

• Performance improvements: SDDP routines have been optimized to run faster, especially those
related to the executions with hourly granularity. Our internal tests showed reduction times rang-
ing from 15% (smaller cases) to 60% (cases with large amount of output results).

In addition to being faster and more efficient, those enhancements make the version 15.0 more robust
and easier to maintain.

Restructuring of input data files

• The demand and load per bus data in “version 1” format have been discontinued. SDDP interface
will keep loading data in the old format, but it will always save the data in the new “version 2”
format. In previous SDDP versions, the new format had been used only in cases with more than
one demand in any system or in cases representing elastic demands.

• A new column has been added to the renewable source configuration data with the associated
renewable station. The interface will automatically create one station for each renewable plant.

When a case is opened in SDDP’s interface version 15.0, the files are automatically updated to the
new format. Before the conversion process, the original data is copied to a backup folder (entitled
BAK folder). We recommend the verification of the converted data. After the verification, the
backup folder can be deleted.

Binary output format for hourly representation

Large volume of output results can create I/O bottlenecks and, in some cases, dramatically affect the
performance of the execution. PSR has performed several internal tests that pointed out that cases
with large volume of output files, such as cases with hourly representation and some cases with large
number of blocks, might have the final simulation times up to 10x faster when using BINARY instead
of standard CSV output format. Apart from this potential execution time reduction, the hard disk size
required to save the results in the binary format is approximately 3x smaller when compared to the
CSV format.

Therefore, SDDP version 15.0 doesn’t support the CSV output format for cases with hourly represen-
tation. Nevertheless, it is still possible and straightforward to obtain the standard CSV files from the
binary results.

For further details, please refer to the SDDP User’s Manual.

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 Other new features
• Sum of circuit constraints can now include DC links: the sum of circuit flows constraints have
been extended to consider the flows of DC links.

• Automatic renewable and minimum thermal generation curtailment: the existing scheme of ver-
ification and automatic reduction of renewable generation has been extended for (i) detecting
excess of thermal minimum generation and (ii) for all types of network representations. These
events that cause infeasibilities are reported in the “sddpwarnings.csv” file. We recommend the
users to check this file so that possible problems in the data definition may easily be identified and
fixed.

• Data manipulation in Excel: since version 14.0, the import/export input data to Excel function has
been extended to other screens:

• Demand and price data

• Load per bus configuration data

• Hydro and thermal maintenance data

• Single reservoir constraints

• Fuel price data

• Interconnection modification data

• Interconnection cost data

• Circuit modification data

• DC link modification data

• Renewable source: modification data, scenarios data and network connection included in the
bus configuration data

• Generation constraints data

Our goal is to extend this functionality to cover all data. Tell us your favorite ones and help us to
prioritize the next developments!

• Additional features in the interface:

• The “Hydrology data in a different path” option has been discontinued

• Number of process in the toolbar: the number of process used to execute SDDP is now di-
rectly defined in the toolbar. If one process is defined then SDDP will be executed in sequential
model, otherwise in parallel.

• Compact case data: a new functionality has been added to the “File” menu for creating a zip
file with all the input data.

• Unit converter: a new option to change some of the standard units of input data has been
added. This option may be activated in the “Tools > Preferences… > Extra features”
screen and it will appear in the toolbar.

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 • File change detection before execution: the interface now checks if any of the input data files
have been changed externally and reloads the case before execution.

• Number of elements: all screens that present a list of elements now show the number of
elements at the top right corner.

• Update of the optimization package: SDDP 15.0 is powered by Xpress version 8.0.

PSR Cloud
PSR Cloud is our web-based computational environment which can be used to run SDDP, avoiding thus
the need for the users to invest in high-performance computers. It is a pay-per-run and per processor
scheme in which the users may select the desired the number of processors for each execution. The
machines available for execution are constantly upgraded. For more details about PSR Cloud please
visit: https://www.psr-inc.com/softwares-en/?current=p4083.

PSR offers to all SDDP users the free use of up to 64 processor-hours in PSR Cloud; please contact
PSR at sddp@psr-inc.com for more details.

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