Abstract: More than a dozen of huge cascaded hydropower stations are or will be under construction on the
Yangtze mainstream, and as the largest hydropower system all over the world, its joint operation has
important and strategic significance to China’s energy security and water resources security. We have
designed a new control scheme for such a hydropower system, combining traditional operation charts with a
progressive optimization algorithm, and applied it to huge cascaded reservoirs on this river that will be in
joint operation with the leading reservoir under construction to verify its performance. This paper describes
this scheme and its application results, and analyzes the benefits of leading reservoir in its compensation to
the power generation of the hydropower cascades and the mainstream water resources in low water season.
We also demonstrate variation trends in comprehensive compensation benefits that depend on the storage of
leading reservoir through sensitivity analysis, including a trend in the comprehensive benefits of the Three
Gorges reservoir under the construction of leading reservoir. Strategic thinking that how to develop the
leading and controlling cascaded reservoirs for a general valley, is also suggested.