Abstract Despite the great diversity, economic and environmental importance of limnic mollusks, the group is still little investigated in the Brazilian semiarid region, especially in the state of Piauí. Thus, this work aims to gather information on the diversity of limnic mollusks in the Brazilian Northeast and the semiarid region, including new records for the state of Piauí, northeastern Brazil. For this, collections in the urban perimeter of the Itaim and Guaribas Rivers, municipalities of Itainópolis, and Picos, respectively, between October 2017 and September 2019. Besides, a literature review was conducted on studies of malacofauna in the Northeast and the Brazilian semiarid region. A total of 11 species from the classes Gastropoda and Bivalvia were collected on the rivers of Piauí, being the first record of Uncancylus concentricus for the Northeast region. For lotic environments in the state of Piauí, Drepanotrema schubarti, Pomacea canaliculata, Pisidium dorbignyi and Stenophysa marmorata were registered for the first time. Then, it was possible to verify that the Northeast of Brazil has 71 species registered, of which 34 occur in the semiarid. The diversity of species surveyed and the first record of the occurrence of several of them for the semiarid region demonstrate the importance of expanding studies involving this group to other areas. The present study is the first to gather and increase the information available on the fauna of limnic mollusks for the Northeast and Brazilian semiarid regions. The information gathered here may contribute to future research and to the species conservation and the environments they occupy, especially considering the presence of non- native and vector species.

The Medium-Term Operation Planning (MTOP) of hydrothermal systems aims to define the generation for each power plant, minimizing the expected operating cost over the planning horizon. Mathematically, this task can be characterized as a linear, stochastic, large-scale problem which requires the application of suitable optimization tools. To solve this problem, this paper proposes to use the Nested Decomposition, frequently used to solve similar problems (as in Brazilian case), and Progressive Hedging, an alternative method, which has interesting features that make it promising to address this problem. To make a comparative analysis between these two methods with respect to the quality of the solution and the computational burden, a benchmark is established, which is obtained by solving a single Linear Programming problem (the Deterministic Equivalent Problem). An application considering a hydrothermal system is carried out.

O problema da programação da operação energética visa definir quais unidades geradoras devem estar em operação para o atendimento à demanda e às demais restrições do sistema, ao longo do horizonte de estudo, de modo que o mínimo custo de operação seja encontrado. Matematicamente, trata-se de um problema não-linear, inteiro-misto e de grande porte, o que torna a sua solução uma tarefa desafiadora. Este artigo apresenta o uso da Relaxação Lagrangeana para decompor o problema da programação da operação em subproblemas menores e mais simples de serem solucionados. No esquema de decomposição utilizado, os subproblemas têm naturezas distintas e são construídos aproveitando-se as particularidades que cada um deles apresenta. Um dos subproblemas resultante do esquema de relaxação utilizado refere-se à alocação das unidades hidrelétricas. Para resolver esse subproblema, propõe-se um algoritmo de enumeração exaustiva do espaço de estados do problema. Cada combinação consiste na solução de problemas não-lineares restritos, resolvidos aqui por meio do método de Lagrangeano Aumentado. Tal método transforma cada problema restrito em uma série de subproblemas irrestritos, que por sua vez são solucionados por um algoritmo de Quase-Newton. O modelo computacional desenvolvido é aplicado a duas usinas hidrelétricas do sistema brasileiro, demonstrando-se a sua consistência e viabilidade prática.

The short-term operation planning problem aims to define the generation units should operate at minimum cost to fully supply the demand while meeting the system constraints over the study horizon. The problem is of a non-linear, integer-mixed, large scale optimization type, whose solution is a rather challenging task. This paper uses the Lagrangian Relaxation to decompose the original problem into simpler subproblems to be solved in sequence. In this decomposition, the subproblems are constructed taking advantage of their specific characteristics. One of the resulting subproblems of the relaxation scheme refers to the commitment of hydroelectric units. In order to solve this problem, an algorithm for exhaustive enumeration is proposed. This algorithm makes use of the Augmented Lagrangean method, which solves the resulting constrained nonlinear subproblems for each examined state. A Quasi-Newton method is used for the solution of the unconstrained subproblems resulting from the application of the Augmented Langrangean method. The proposed model is applied to two hydroelectric units of the Brazilian power system, demonstrating its consistency and practical feasibility.

We consider the optimal scheduling of hydropower plants in a hydrothermal interconnected system. This problem, of outmost importance for large-scale power systems with a high proportion of hydraulic generation, requires a detailed description of the so-called hydro unit production function. In our model, we relate the amount of generated hydropower to nonlinear tailrace levels; we also take into account hydraulic losses, turbine-generator efficiencies, as well as multiple 0-1 states associated with forbidden operation zones. Forbidden zones are crucial to avoid nasty phenomena such as mechanical vibrations in the turbine, cavitation, and low efficiency levels. The minimization of operating costs subject to such detailed constraints results in a large-scale mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem. By means of Lagrangian Relaxation, the original problem is split into a sequence of smaller and easy-to-solve subproblems, coordinated by a dual master program. In order to deal better with the combinatorial aspect introduced by the forbidden zones, we derive three different decomposition strategies, applicable to various configurations of hydro plants (with few or many units, which can be identical or different). We use a Sequential Quadratic Programming algorithm to solve nonlinear subproblems. We assess our approach on a real-life hydroelectric configuration extracted from the south sub region of the Brazilian hydrothermal power system.