Published Paper Details:

A reservoir operating policy is a sequence of release decisions in operational periods (such as months), specified as a function of the stage of the system. The state of the system in a period is generally defined by the reservoir storage at the beginning of a period and the inflow to the reservoir during the period. These reservoir release decisions are to be integrated with irrigation scheduling to obtain the best possible yields considering the crop yield response to water deficits. In the present study, an optimal reservoir operation model integrating the reservoir releases to irrigation scheduling is developed by linear programming. The objective of the model is to minimize the reduction in yield of crops due to water deficits subject to constraints on storage, release, and mass balance of the reservoir. The decision variables are monthly releases to each crop grown under the project in a year. The model developed is applied to a case study of the Gundlakamma reservoir located in the Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh, India. Inflows into the reservoir are obtained from the Thammavaram CWC station, and gross irrigation requirements of all crops grown under the left and right canals are determined. 75% dependable inflows are considered while deriving the optimal reservoir operating policy.