A nonlinear water level controller for reservoirs in cascade

Abstract

In this paper, a strategy for the control of the water levels of a cascade of reservoirs is presented. This is achieved by operating a pumping station or discharge structures. The system is disturbed by reservoirs inflows resulting from rainfall-runoff events. Some examples of these systems are reservoirs that must be operated to satisfy navigation or leisure requirements or their operation during flood events. The presented controller reveals a good performance and has the advantage of being simple to implement. Moreover, it was proven that the described control law ensures asymptotic reference tracking, reaches several convergence rates, by tuning, and it allows the changing of the desired water levels reference values during the control process.