Evaluation of Economic and Ecological Benefits of Reservoir Ecological Releases Based on Reservoir Optimization Operation

To maximize the benefits of power generation and water supply of the reservoir under the premise of ensuring ecological flow as much as possible, it is necessary to formulate a highly operational release scheme in the actual production scheduling process. To mitigate the ecological impacts of reservoir operations, enhanced environmental flow releases are required; however, this results in diminished reservoir economic outputs. Therefore, in order to determine the government subsidy standards for ecological regulation of reservoirs and improve the enthusiasm of water conservancy departments for ecological regulation, it is necessary to conduct comprehensive analysis and research on the benefits of ecological regulation. According to the ecological releases of the reservoir, the reservoir operation scheme is formulated, and the comprehensive benefits of the reservoir operation are analyzed and studied to determine the optimal operation scheme. Based on the monthly inflow runoff of the Baishi Reservoir to the Daling River from 1956 to 2011, constrained by the ecological base flow specified by the government, and combined with the water supply and power generation functions of the reservoir, an optimal operation model of the Baishi Reservoir based on ecological release is constructed. The water supply, power generation, and ecological benefits of the reservoir discharge are comprehensively analyzed and calculated to analyze and study the loss of economic benefits caused by the reservoir discharge and the ecological benefits that can be obtained from the ecological discharge. Based on the comprehensive evaluation of multiple indicators, the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to select the optimal scheduling scheme. The optimal scheduling plan for a reservoir is closely related to its characteristic water level. In order to improve the efficiency of reservoir scheduling, monthly control of reservoir discharge can be implemented. The guarantee rate of urban domestic water supply and ecological water use can be increased as much as possible, while the guarantee rate of agricultural water use can be appropriately reduced to obtain the optimal comprehensive benefits. The outflow considering ecological release is 6.5–7 m3/s from June to April and 1 m3/s in May. The outflow without considering ecological release is 4 m3/s from June to April and 1 m3/s in May. This study has certain guiding significance and value for the formulation of an ecological operation scheme for reservoirs and the analysis of benefits.