Large Hydropower Plants Research Articles

Evaluation and recommendation of a subsidy instrument for new large hydropower plants, use case of Switzerland

Hydropower is the central pillar of the current Swiss electricity mix. The Swiss energy transition will profoundly change the electricity mix by transitioning a third of electricity generation from nuclear towards renewable energy sources mainly. This backbone role of hydropower is hindered by the current Europe-wide sluggish economic situation, characterized by subsidized new renewables energies which distort electricity prices, a partially liberalized market and power production overcapacity. In this difficult context, a strong and comprehensive political support through long-term policy will be of utmost importance to accompany hydropower across this transformation. This article explores various subsidy instruments, before using the general framework of “System Engineering” to base a precise recommendation for Swiss hydropower. The recommended mixture of investment contribution with discount reclamation appears the most appropriate instrument. Also, the short time horizon means that the subsidization can be quickly terminated if necessary. In parallel, it is a mature instrument since it is already used for other new renewable energies. The discount model allows reclaiming subsidies in case of an excess profitability. The strength of this study is its robust, comprehensive and all-encompassing methodology which can be replicated to other cases (for instance, other technologies or energy sources) and other countries.

Global proliferation of small hydropower plants – science and policy

Large‐scale electricity policies that embrace renewable resources have led to continued investments in hydropower. Despite evolving viewpoints regarding the sustainability of large hydropower installations, there has been a major increase in support for the widespread development of small hydropower plants (SHPs). A global synthesis reveals that 82,891 SHPs are operating or are under construction (11 SHPs for every one large hydropower plant) and that this number is estimated to triple if all potential generation capacity were to be developed. Fueled by considerable political and economic incentives in recent decades, the growth of SHPs has greatly outpaced available ecological science. We provide evidence for not only the lack of scientifically informed oversight of SHP development but also the limitations of the capacity‐based regulations currently in use. The potential indiscriminate expansion of SHPs under the pretense of promoting sustainable energy is concerning, and we identify several important steps to help ensure new scientific advances, effective management, and policy reform in the future.

Improved nonlinear turbine-governor model and parameter assessment for a large hydropower plant

Improved nonlinear turbine-governor model and parameter assessment for a large hydropower plant

Revisiting Renewable Energy Map in Indonesia: Seasonal Hydro and Solar Energy Potential for Rural Off-Grid Electrification (Provincial Level)

Regarding the acceleration of renewable energy diffusion in Indonesia as well as achieving the national energy mix target, renewable energy map is essential to provide useful information to build renewable energy system. This work aims at updating the renewable energy potential map, i.e. hydro and solar energy potential, with a revised model based on the global climate data. The renewable energy map is intended to assist the design off-grid system by hydropower plant or photovoltaic system, particularly for rural electrification. Specifically, the hydro energy map enables the stakeholders to determine the suitable on-site hydro energy technology (from pico-hydro, micro-hydro, mini-hydro to large hydropower plant). Meanwhile, the solar energy map depicts not only seasonal solar energy potential but also estimated energy output from photovoltaic system.

COST ANALYSIS OF MINI HYDRO POWER PLANT USING BACTERIAL SWARM OPTIMIZATION

According to the 2023 vision determined by Turkey, which is one of the G20 countries, it aims to evaluate of the hydro power potential in terms of technical and economic making medium and large hydro power plants. Turkey's mini and micro hydro power potential isn’t fully evaluated as a number of countries. In this context, empirical formula for cost analysis of mini and micro hydro power plants, which are becoming increasingly important, have been developed in this work with the aim of facilitating economic analysis. The developed equation is found by modified Bacterial Swarm Optimization (BSO) algorithm. When analyzed with the literature data, the obtained equation can calculate the costs with the least mistakes.

Predicting the geomorphological responses of gravel‐bed rivers to flow and sediment source perturbations at the watershed scale: an application in an Alpine watershed

AbstractPredicting morphological channel changes using physically‐based models requires extended data for the description of the river channel and for hydrological and sedimentological inputs. At the watershed scale, these data are usually scarce, and such a refined modeling is typically difficult to build. A simpler modeling of the morphological impacts due to the changes in the principal drivers that control channel shape and dynamics is more adaptable. In this study we focused on the morphological responses of gravel‐bed rivers to flow and sediment source perturbation at watershed scale. The aim is to develop and test a tool capable of semi‐quantitatively predicting the morphological river response at the watershed scale due to a set of spatially distributed perturbations. The model considers flow regime (Q) and sediment supply (S) as the two main factors controlling the fluvial morphology in alluvial rivers. Two indicators have been proposed to evaluate the alteration on Q and S, and they are illustrated as vectors on each reach of the river network. The magnitude of the vectors corresponds to the intensity of the perturbation and its direction represents the changing trend that nine selected morphological variables (bed elevation, slope, width, depth, wetted area, width to depth ratio, d50, terrace formation, and colonization of vegetation) are likely to follow from an initial state. The trends or trajectories of changes were assessed based on empirical relations, case studies, and conceptual models. This method was applied to the Isère watershed (5700 km2) at Grenoble (France), a river that hosts large and complex hydropower plant systems constructed during 50s ‐70s. The predictions over 23 river reaches and eight variables were evaluated in the range where the model was capable of predicting the morphological evolution of the river system. Its performance was verified and in the majority of the cases the results were coherent with field surveys and previous observations. The results indicate that this is a complex problem which needs more careful consideration of constraints that are difficult to assess, such as simultaneous and different sources of perturbations, hypotheses of initial dynamic equilibrium, and sediment supply quantification. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

OPTIMIZATION MODEL FOR VARIABLE RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES GENERATION: MACEDONIAN CASE STUDY

This paper is motivated by a large tendency of shift towards low emission electricity production, which can be achieved by substituting the conventional energy sources by renewable energy sources. Therefore, a share of renewable energy sources is continually growing. However, large-scale integration of renewable energy sources into the power system is a challenging task, since it depends on a balance between demand and supply at any time and because of the nature of renewable energy sources. The production from some sources such as the photovoltaic and wind power plants fluctuates depending on meteorological conditions, so it cannot be regulated. However, large hydropower plants can be regulated, so they are suitable for electricity balancing. In this paper, an optimization model is set for a system with 100 % renewable energy sources, which includes models for correlation of meteorological data and the production of electricity from different variable renewable energy sources. The resulting model gives an optimal ratio of production of variable renewable energy sources, which depends on the share of these sources in the total electricity production. The objective function of this optimization problem is to minimize the excess and lack of electricity production. For this purpose, hourly data for electricity consumption and hourly meteorological data are included. The results show that if only wind and photovoltaic power plants are considered, for the case of Macedonia, this optimum is found at 72% wind and 28% photovoltaic power production. However, if the already installed capacity of the big hydropower plants and the maximal potential of the small hydropower plants which make together 30% of the total installed capacity is taken into account, the optimal ratio of production from the other sources is: 50% wind power generation and 20% photovoltaic power generation.

The local socio-economic impacts of large hydropower plant development in a developing country

Despite extensive discussion in the literature about the socio-economic impacts of hydropower development on surrounding communities, there is (1) a lack of quantitative studies that look at impacts over extended periods of time and (2) a lack of studies including multiple projects in the context of a developing country. Here, we use econometric methods to evaluate the relationship between county-level socio-economic indicators and hydropower development for 56 Brazilian hydropower plants built between 1991 and 2010. We find that counties that built hydropower plants had greater GDP and tax revenues during their first few years of development than a control group that consisted of counties with hydropower projects planned but not yet built. However, those positive economic effects were short lived (<15years). We also find that social indicators (e.g. average income, life expectancy, educational level, access to piped water and public electricity, teenage pregnancy levels, and HIV cases) in counties that built hydropower did not statistically differ from those in the control counties. The results suggest that, for Brazil, justifications for hydropower projects based on local long-term economic and social development should be questioned, and that more effective mechanisms for turning local short-term economic growth into long-term development are needed.

The future of power generation in Brazil: An analysis of alternatives to Amazonian hydropower development

The Brazilian government has plans to build 26 large hydropower plants in the Amazon basin between 2013 and 2028. These plants will have a total installed capacity of 44GW, 9000km2 of reservoir area, and a total cost of US$ 30–70 billion. In this paper we aim to evaluate alternative generation pathways to avoid the adverse social and environmental impacts associated with reservoirs in the Amazon. Specifically we model the Brazilian electricity network under five capacity expansion scenarios. We assumed the government expansion plans as the baseline and created alternative scenarios where wind and natural gas power plants replace large Amazonian hydropower plants. We compared the scenarios using several performance indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, capital and operational costs, wind curtailments, and energy storage in the hydropower reservoirs. The simulations suggest that a more aggressive policy towards wind generation than the baseline has the potential to replace Amazon hydropower providing advantages to the system operation (e.g., higher storage in hydropower reservoirs). However, when installed wind capacity reaches 24% to 28% of the total installed capacity, more thermal generation is required to balance the hydro-wind variability, increasing the operational costs and greenhouse gas emissions compared to the baseline.

Forecasting monthly energy production of small hydropower plants in ungauged basins using grey model and improved seasonal index

Abstract A first-order one-variable grey model (GM(1,1)) is combined with improved seasonal index (ISI) to forecast monthly energy production for small hydropower plants (SHPs) in an ungauged basin, in which the ISI is used to weaken the seasonality of input data for the GM(1,1) model. The ISI is calculated by a hybrid model combining K-means clustering technique and ratio-to-moving-average method, which can adapt to different inflow scenarios. Based on the similar hydrological and meteorological conditions of large hydropower plants (LHPs) and SHPs in the same basin, a reference LHP is identified and its local inflow data, instead of the limited available data of SHPs, is used to calculate the ISI. Case study results for the Yangbi and Yingjiang counties in Yunnan Province, China are evaluated against observed data. Compared with the original GM(1,1) model, the GM(1,1) model combined with traditional seasonal index (TSI-GM(1,1)), and the linear regression model, the proposed ISI-GM(1,1) model gives the best performance, suggesting that it is a feasible way to forecast monthly energy production for SHPs in data-sparse areas.

Water-carbon nexus of hydropower: The case of a large hydropower plant in Tibet, China

Under the increasing crisis of a worldwide watershed water shortage and the pressing carbon emission reduction requirement, making clear the water-carbon nexus of hydropower plants will help co-resolve the contradiction in a significant water-carbon related issue. Simulating the water-carbon nexus of a biomass energy plant, this study calculates the water-carbon nexus of a hydropower plant, which represents the water utilization amount per unit greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction. The water utilization of a hydropower plant is composed of absolute water evaporation loss and temporary water storage loss. For the Zhikong hydropower plant in Tibet, 0.704m3 of water is utilized when achieves a unit kg GHG reduction, and 0.126m3 of water is evaporated when keeps a cubic meter of water in reservoir storage. With regards to the accumulated water-carbon nexus, a biomass energy system is more efficient in achieving a GHG reduction than the Zhikong hydropower plant in the first three years of operation, but thereafter the Zhikong hydropower plant is more efficient. The water-carbon nexus has identified a new direction for allocating watershed water resources to maximize GHG reduction potential, and also can be an indicator against which to manage watershed water resources in an efficient and sustainable way.

Power Generation Scheduling for Integrated Large and Small Hydropower Plant Systems in Southwest China

AbstractElectric power transmission lines in service in southwest China have fallen far behind the power sources. With rapid development of hydropower in this area, severe water spills for hydropow...

Valorization of potentials of wind energy in Montenegro

Investments in energy sector are usually long term processes both in construction and exploitation phase, and therefore require many conditions to be satisfied, mostly from legislative and technical sector. While the legislative can change in accordance with economy activities in the country, technical data (on-site measurements) which are the main base for energy facility design, need to be reliable as much as possible. Wind energy has a significant global potential which exceeds the world?s electrical energy consumptions. This paper presents the estimation of wind energy potentials in Montenegro, based on all previous available studies in this field. The wind energy potential in Montenegro is based on a combination of 3-D numerical simulations of wind fields on the entire territory, and comprehensive on-site measurements. The preliminary studies show that there is a potential of areas with high and mean values of a capacity factor about 400 MW, and annual production of 900 GWh of electric energy. The share of wind parks in the total installed power in Montenegro is planned to be about 8%, while an adequate ratio of wind parks in an annual production from renewable sources (large hydro power plants are included here) is estimated to be 11.4%. The paper presents the current state of art in the field of building of wind parks in Montenegro. A particular attention was paid to the legislation framework and strategic documents in the energy area in Montenegro.

Energy resources in the Republic of Serbia: Development policy

ABSTRACTBy joining the Energy Community and obtaining candidate status for accession to the European Union (EU), Serbia has committed to harmonize its energy policy to the legislation of the EU. The backbone of this policy is the power sector, which will continue to be the foundation of future development. In fact, the power sector is probably the closest to EU standards. This paper presents the energy resources in Serbia and the potentials that can be used to define the power sector policy. It is expected that lignite and large hydropower plants (HPPs) will become the basis of the energy system in the future, but with a significant increase in the share of renewable sources, primarily wind energy and biomass. One of the main objectives is to reach a 50:50 ratio of electricity produced from renewable and non-renewable sources in the period 2020–2030.

Hydro Unit Commitment With a Head-Sensitive Reservoir and Multiple Vibration Zones Using MILP

A batch of huge hydropower plants with multiple vibration zones have been developed in China. These vibration zones varying with net head, i.e., head-sensitive, seriously challenge the hydro unit commitment (HUC). This paper presents a MILP model for HUC with a head-sensitive reservoir and multiple vibration zones. The focus of the study is mainly on two net head related constraints, namely the unit performance curves and multiple vibration zones. These constraints are linearized through the use of binary 0-1 integer variables. The practical behavior of the MILP model is demonstrated using real-world case studies. The results demonstrate that the proposed model is computationally efficient and suitable for large hydropower plants with multiple vibration zones, showing its potential practicability and validity for solving the HUC problem.

Technical and financial valuation of hydrokinetic power in the discharge channels of large hydropower plants in Colombia: A case study

This work presents an assessment of the potential use of hydrokinetic turbines in the discharge channels of large hydroelectric power plants in Colombia. The assessment is performed at a pre-feasibility stage in order to evaluate the technical and financial potential of using hydrokinetic devices as a way to exploit kinetic energy in such channels. As a case study, two large hydropower plants were selected, one operated by a Francis turbine and the other operated by a Pelton turbine. The analysis assessed the hydraulic characteristics of the channels and the corresponding discharge flows. A prefeasibility financial analysis in an environment of uncertainty was also carried out using Monte Carlo simulation. The results show that the technology is not currently feasible for the Colombian market conditions, but the situation should be monitored in order to identify the right time for its optimal use in the future. The proposed methodology can be applied to research the feasibility of hydrokinetic energy for other kinds of applications.

Developing Sustainable Infrastructure for Small Hydro Power Plants through Clean Development Mechanisms in Colombia

Developing sustainable infrastructure projects in Colombia requires special instruments leading to implementing Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM). For this reason, different financing alternatives to traditional methods for developing Small hydropower (SHP) projects should be evaluated. This analysis shows the country's potential for developing SHP projects thanks to the numerous mighty rivers that generate electrical power. Furthermore, CDM is a globally used method to finance SHP projects. Hence, this paper proposes that the Colombian domestic demand could be met through these projects. The large hydropower plants, besides complementing the domestic demand, can export the remnant power. Additionally, the SHPs development cycle, particularly their financial phase is also analyzed. The results of this study show that sustainable funding mechanisms encourage the development of infrastructure in Colombia. Also, CDM would increase the development of power generating projects and these can be used in other sectors such as water, waste management, and highways.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF AHP, ELECTRE III &amp; ELECTRE IV BY EQUAL OBJECTIVE &amp; SHANNON’S ENTROPY OBJECTIVE &amp; SAATY’S SUBJECTIVE CRITERIA WEIGHTING IN A PRIVATE SMALL HYDROPOWER PLANTS INVESTMENTS SELECTION PROBLEM

&lt;p&gt;Private small hydropower plant investments are more challenging than medium and large private hydropower plant investments when considering engineering analysis. One of the necessary tasks is the selection of the most appropriate private small hydropower investment amongst several alternatives. Brokerage, consultancy and private investor activities are a few examples of these kinds of real world activities. There are many multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) or multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods, and different researchers prefer different methods This research study investigates three methods at once for the same problem: Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Elimination and Choice Translating Reality (ELECTRE) III and ELECTRE IV. A comparative investigation is conducted on one simple unique selection model for all three methods. This unified model has seven objective factors (catchment area, project runoff, net head, flow rate, firm energy, secondary energy, investment cost). An additional comparison is also made on the criteria weighting amongst equal objective, Shannon’s Entropy objective and Saaty’s subjective criteria weighting. The simplistic unified model is structured in three levels. There are seven alternatives in the pre-development investment stage. The Super Decisions software and the ELECTRE III-IV software are implemented in this study. The pairwise comparisons of factors results in an inconsistency value of 0,09511 which is 7&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; in the Saaty's AHP weighting. The Shannon’s Entropy objective weighting represents a difference in the rate of the expert decision maker’s evaluations ranging between -67% and 671%. The equal weighting represents a rate change between -64% and 626%. Both approaches can't represent human judgments (here only one expert decision maker) well in this model. Fortunately, the same alternative (Alternative 3) ranks first. These findings promise that further studies on this subject can give some clues for the development of an autonomous computer based intelligent decision support system. Some observed pros and cons of these methods are also presented in this study. The observations and critical issues are presented during modeling, application, evaluation and analysis to help researchers, consultants, and readers in the small hydropower investments research and practical fields. &lt;/p&gt;

Estimating greenhouse gas emissions from future Amazonian hydroelectric reservoirs

Brazil plans to meet the majority of its growing electricity demand with new hydropower plants located in the Amazon basin. However, large hydropower plants located in tropical forested regions may lead to significant carbon dioxide and methane emission. Currently, no predictive models exist to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions before the reservoir is built. This paper presents two different approaches to investigate the future carbon balance of eighteen new reservoirs in the Amazon. The first approach is based on a degradation model of flooded carbon stock, while the second approach is based on flux data measured in Amazonian rivers and reservoirs. The models rely on a Monte Carlo simulation framework to represent the balance of the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that results when land and river are converted into a reservoir. Further, we investigate the role of the residence time/stratification in the carbon emissions estimate. Our results imply that two factors contribute to reducing overall emissions from these reservoirs: high energy densities reservoirs, i.e., the ratio between the installed capacity and flooded area, and vegetation clearing. While the models’ uncertainties are high, we show that a robust treatment of uncertainty can effectively indicate whether a reservoir in the Amazon will result in larger greenhouse gas emissions when compared to other electricity sources.

OPTIMIZATION MODEL FOR VARIABLE RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES GENERATION: MACEDONIAN CASE STUDY

This paper is motivated by a large tendency of shift towards low emission electricity production, which can be achieved by substituting the conventional energy sources by renewable energy sources. Therefore, a share of renewable energy sources is continually growing. However, large-scale integration of renewable energy sources into the power system is a challenging task, since it depends on a balance between demand and supply at any time and because of the nature of renewable energy sources. The production from some sources such as the photovoltaic and wind power plants fluctuates depending on meteorological conditions, so it cannot be regulated. However, large hydropower plants can be regulated, so they are suitable for electricity balancing. In this paper, an optimization model is set for a system with 100 % renewable energy sources, which includes models for correlation of meteorological data and the production of electricity from different variable renewable energy sources. The resulting model gives an optimal ratio of production of variable renewable energy sources, which depends on the share of these sources in the total electricity production. The objective function of this optimization problem is to minimize the excess and lack of electricity production. For this purpose, hourly data for electricity consumption and hourly meteorological data are included. The results show that if only wind and photovoltaic power plants are considered, for the case of Macedonia, this optimum is found at 72% wind and 28% photovoltaic power production. However, if the already installed capacity of the big hydropower plants and the maximal potential of the small hydropower plants which make together 30% of the total installed capacity is taken into account, the optimal ratio of production from the other sources is: 50% wind power generation and 20% photovoltaic power generation.