Availability Projections of Hydroelectric Power Plants through Monte Carlo Simulation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The Authors focused on Monte Carlo Simulation to obtain availability projections for Hydroelectric Power Plants, based mainly on regulatory aspects involving the Availability Factor. They point out that the main purpose of the simulation is to generate scenarios to obtain statistics for risk analysis and make decision in relation to the power plant in Brazil. The article seems to be interesting for Readers. It creates a logical story and that is why in my opinion could be published in "Energies" after some corrections concerning generally better text elaboration. The translation of some sentences from Portuguese into English is also required. Some of the comments on the manuscript are listed below.

1. Line 12 and 13; some keywords have been already used in the title of your manuscript. Please change them into different ones (to avoid the keywords repetition with the words used in the title).
2. Line 20; what does the abbreviation SNI mean?
3. Figure 1 and 2; if the figures are taken from the literature, then the literature citation should be given to the potential Readers.
4. Figure 1 and 2; the descriptions are given in Portuguese. Please do translation from Portuguese into English.
5. Lines 214, 298, 355; the text is given in Portuguese. Please do translation from Portuguese into English.
6. Line 264 and 270; what does abbreviation UG mean? Earlier in the manuscript the abbreviation GU has been used by Authors. Is it the same or maybe it has a different meaning?
7. Equations from (1) to (22); if the equations are taken from the literature, then the appropriate citations should be given.
8. In the opinion of the Reviewer the text of the manuscript should be better elaborated before the final publication.
9. In the Reviewer opinion the optimisation problem should be rather concentrated as future prognoses instead of solving optimisation problems for past years.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors present a very interesting Monte Carlo Simulation for predicting the availability of Hydroelectric Power in Plants. Scheduled maintenance stops and unexpected stops are taken into account in a very reasonable way, producing a very consistent simulation framework that could be used in different hydroelectric plants. The methodology could be translated into different industrial situations, which increases the interest of the paper. Another point of interest is the study of the economic consequences of the lack of availability of the hydroelectric power.

The functions that must be minimized and the conditions that these functions must fulfill are well explained, in detail, so general readers can have a quite good idea of the  problem and the simulations to predict future events.

There is, from my point of view, one weak point in the paper. Final results of the simulations depend largely on the chosen weight (see lines 441 to 447) for the maintenance works done, so the chosen weight (50%) should be justified somehow.

Apart from this, several typos are present and text in Portuguese, instead of English, can be read. I collect them now:

Line 82: s is missed

Line 190: where (Portuguese)

Lines 214-216: in Portuguese

Figure 2: In Portuguese

Line 298: where (in Portuguese)

Line 316: optimization ( I missed)

Line 350 Calculation (order)

Line 355: where (in Portuguese)

Lines 403-404: in Portuguese

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

 

This paper proposes an interesting based on Monte Carlo Simulation to obtain the projections for Hydroelectric Power Plants. I have to congratulate the presentation and how well is explained. However, I consider that there are some unclear points needing a revision. I list my concerns as follows:

 

Mayor Issues:

 

• After reading the introduction, I think that the background does not provide enough information. The article only talks about Monte Carlo Simulation. However, there are other algorithm such us Neural Network, which can simulate the hydroelectric plants. I am not saying to change the article, just to mentioned it around the 50 line, as MCS is not the only method to simulate the plant and ANN are used as a twins of the plant to check the state, the best moment to make a preventive maintenance, etc.

Mino issues:

• From line 214 to 216 the text is in Portuguese, so please check and revise other possible language mistakes.
• In line 404 there is another Portuguese mistake in Linux Version.
• There are too many variables, could you write all the variables in a table with a short description, for example:

Variable	Description
μg,m	Average of shutdown hours of unit g in month m

 

There are some English grammatic mistakes, thus I recommend you to pay the English editing service to improve it. Otherwise, please revise the text and improve it.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

 Dear authors,

   I accept in the present form.