Abstract
Impact of climate change or climate variability on water resources is an exceedingly concerned issue. Hydropower development is one of the most affected industries due to the climatic variability. Therefore, this paper presents the promising results from a study of the impact of climate variability on hydropower generation of Erathna run-of-the-river (ROR) hydropower plant located in Rathnapura district, Sri Lanka. This study was based on surrounded rain gauges outside the catchment as Erathna catchment area is an un-gauged catchment. 30-year rainfall trend analysis from 1988 to 2017 was done using Mann–Kendall and Sen’s slope estimator tests to predict the available trends. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to investigate the relationship between rainfall and Erathna power generation. Results show negative trends for annual rainfalls in several rain gauges, while seasonal trend analyses support that observation. July is the most critical month for most of the rain gauges around the catchment. The results also show a good correlation between the rainfalls and power generation. Therefore, the results conclude the importance of rainfall trend analysis in un-gauged catchments and its forecasting capacity of water resources usage in hydropower development.
Highlights
Energy is a key component in human lives and the world’s economy, it is considered one of the major causes for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and, the climate change (Edenhofer et al 2011)
Homogeneous test results for the monthly rainfalls show that rainfall data are homogeneous
Results clearly show the impact of climate change/climate variability on the rainfall
Summary
Energy is a key component in human lives and the world’s economy, it is considered one of the major causes for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and, the climate change (Edenhofer et al 2011). Hydropower is used mainly as a dispatchable power generation for integrating renewable sources in electric grid and carbon reduction (Tarroja et al 2016). Run-of-the-river (ROR) hydropower plants worldwide are capable of generating about 200 GW of hydroelectricity with special interest identified in developing countries in Asia and Africa (International Energy Agency 2016). Interest in these projects has diminished since past studies have shown that global warming and climate variability may have severe impacts on available water resources for hydropower
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