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Energy Sources and Renewable Energy
The result is an innovative technological tool, SHYMAT (Small Hydropower Management Assessment Tool) with a core system responsible for bringing the automatically updated information all together, executing the necessary operations with the appropriate models, and providing the results to a Web-based user interface. The user interacts with the application with utilities to display some alerts, show graphical outputs, export data, generate formatted reports and validate predictions previously made by incorporating actual measured flow data. This friendly tool is targeted at end-users, providing forecast of river streamflow, turbined water (taking into account ecological flow restrictions and the capacity of the hydropower plant), the energy production and the number of days of operability expected f o r the next 6 months according to the forecast provided.
This tool will allow managers to anticipate the real risk of drought/scarcity scenarios, but also the water excess discharges coming from snowmelt to quickly tune up the machines in order to increase the capacity of the plant when possible. Thus, users can take advantage of forecasting climate data in order to: 1) anticipate if the hydropower plant could or not be operative in order to schedule the operation for medium-long term investments; 2) avoid losses of turbinable water flow by having the turbines ready to start operation tasks, and 3) predict the energy production of the facility for market issues. SHYMAT has been designed to be easily applied in other hydropower plants for planning and management of operation tasks.
4. Acknowledgment
This work was co-financed by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Fighting and adapting to climate change programme under grant agreement no. 730482. Authors are thankful for the support and technical knowledge provided by the Poqueira hydropower system managers.
5. References
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Berga, L. (2016). The Role of Hydropower in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: A Review”, Engineering- London. 2, pp 313-318.
Paish. O. (2002). Small hydro power: technology and current status. Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev. 6, pp 537-556. IRENA, International Renewable Energy Agency (2012). Renewable energy technologies: cost analysis series,
vol 1: Power Sector, issue 3/5, June 2012.
Pérez-Palazón, M.J., Pimentel, R., Herrero, J., Aguilar, C., Perales, J.M., Polo, M.J. (2015) Extreme values of
snow-related variables in Mediterranean regions: Trends and long-term forecasting in Sierra Nevada (Spain).
Proc. Int. Assoc. Hydrol. Sci. 369, pp 157–162.
Pimentel, R., Herrero, J., Polo, M.J. (2017). Subgrid parameterization of snow distribution at a Mediterranean site
using terrestrial photography. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 21, pp. 805–820.
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