Punchiná reservoir is part of the San Carlos Hydroelectric Power Plant, situated in the Guatapé watershed. The Guatapé river is an affluent of the Samaná Norte river, which in turn is an affluent of the Magdalena river. San Carlos Hydroelectric Project uses the waters from the ri
...
Punchiná reservoir is part of the San Carlos Hydroelectric Power Plant, situated in the Guatapé watershed. The Guatapé river is an affluent of the Samaná Norte river, which in turn is an affluent of the Magdalena river. San Carlos Hydroelectric Project uses the waters from the rivers San Carlos and Guatapé and discharges the turbined flow directly into the Samaná Norte river by a tunnel. Currently, there is flow downstream of the Punchiná dam only on the days where the spillway operates, significantly impacting the riverine ecosystem. Additionally, claims have been made about how hydropeaking causes floods in villages downstream, particularly in La Pesca village. This town is located in the confluence of Samaná Norte and Magdalena river, on the left bank of Samaná Norte river mouth. The present report deals with the multi-objective optimization of the Punchiná reservoir of San Carlos Hydroelectric Project in Colombia by considering the objectives of maximizing hydropower revenues, maximizing the ecological discharge at Guatapé river, downstream of the dam, and reducing the flood risk at La Pesca village. Four numerical methods were coded in Python to solve the reservoir routing. To solve the multi-objective optimization, the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) using the Pymoo framework in Python was set up, along with the use of an Explicit Euler numerical method for modelling the river routing. The simulation was performed for 3 periods (high, average and low flow conditions) within the years 2010-2017. After multiple optimization scenarios, it can be concluded that the hydropower and environmental flows are competing objectives, i.e., allocating water for environmental flow purposes from the Punchiná reservoir will always result in a reduction of the hydropower revenues. Hence, it is recommended that an incentive system is developed so that the ecosystemic services are compensated to persuade the generating companies into including ecological objectives into their optimal operation curves. In addition, suggestions on considering a bypass tunnel to let the discharge flow into Guatapé river dry trajectory while adding a turbine to take advantage of this flow are also given. The results also show that the flood mitigation objective does not result in a competing objective against the hydropower and environmental flow objectives when there are average flow conditions in the Magdalena river. Floods commonly occur during extreme weather periods whereas the optimization of the Punchiná reservoir is performed for monthly average flow conditions at Magdalena river. Thus, to assess the hydropeaking effect in the water levels at La Pesca site, it is recommended that the reservoir optimization should also include extreme flow conditions at Magdalena river when experienced.