Abstract: Hydropower is a form of renewable energy.Rationally optimizing the power generation schedules of cascade hydropower stations in a river basin can enhance the utilization rate of hydro energy.To increase the total power generation of three cascade hydropower stations in a river basin, this paper establishes an optimization model based on a variable stage progressive optimization algorithm for the power generation of cascade hydropower stations.In view of the limitations of the traditional progressive optimization algorithms, which are prone to local optima, this paper proposes embedding a variable stage strategy within the two-stage decomposition of the progressive optimization algorithm.This effectively reduces the dependency of the optimal solution on the initial solution and ensures convergence to a global optimum.Computational results indicate that the variable stage optimization algorithm yields improved power generation with faster and more stable convergence.