COMBINED MODELS APPLIED TO REAL-TIME VALI DATION OF NATURAL NET BASINSUPPLIES TO WATER RESERVOIRS

The daily net basin supply of the large reservoirs of Hydro-Quebec is currently computed by the water balance equation that relies, in parti cular, on gauge measurements. The number of gauge and their location h eavily depend on simplified hypotheses that generate many errors in th e computation. Also, for various technical reasons, the daily net basi n supply can be missing. These problems greatly affect Hydro-Quebec's real-time management of water resources. In this paper, we present a p rocedure that allows the estimation of the daily net basin supply of H ydro-Quebec reservoirs, taking into account the different constraints of real-time forecasting. The approach is based on combined forecasts from two multiple regression models. It appears that this methodology gives good results and constitutes a considerable improvement in compa rison with classical models and intuitive procedures usually employed in real-time forecasting. An application of the procedure on the daily net basin supply of three reservoirs (Baskatong, La Grande 3, and Out ardes 4) is finally presented and gives satisfactory results.