Development of an informatics tool for efficient hydropower potential determination
- Authors: Sašo Šantl, Julio Alterach, Daniel Kozelj
- Citation: Acta hydrotechnica, vol. 25, no. 42, pp. 19-30, 2012.
- Abstract: The process of determining the residual hydropower potential of a certain river catchment or reach requires a sequence of methods from data acquisition (topography, hydrology etc.) to definition of different parameters such as hydropower efficiency. The level of detail of this process depends on the required level of decision-making. Until relatively recently, the determination of residual hydropower potential was performed manually. Nowadays with the developments in information technology, this process can be fully automated with significant time efficiency. Nonetheless, when a model is established, the process of input data verification must still be performed, which in some cases requires additional input data corrections. Furthermore, it can sometimes occur that original data, e.g. official data on river network, needs to be corrected. The article gives insight into the main steps and development of an informatics tool where the process of testing on real cases provides a good feedback to the developer. The presented tool, based on geographic information system, was developed within the project SEE Hydropower and it is estimated it will provide efficient support to the decision-making process at strategic level where multi-sector objectives are harmonized. Testing of the developed tool and result interpretation were performed and verified on real case study areas.
- Keywords: hydropower potential, geographic information tool, river network, hydrology, electricity production efficiency, verification, pilot case study
- Full text: a42ss.pdf
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