The Hydropower Potential Assessment Tool (HPAT): Evaluation of run-of-river resource potential for any global land area and application to Falls Creek, Oregon, USA

Abstract

a b s t r a c tSmall-scale hydropower systems are popular both in the United States and much of the developing world due to the emphasis on renewable energy and the general cost-competitiveness of hydroelectric power generation. We present a novel modeling package, referred to as the Hydropower Potential Assessment Tool (HPAT), to assess historic and projected future small-scale run-of-river hydropower resource potential at a single location or distributed over a study region. HPAT implements a fully-distributed streamflow model, which is coupled to a digital elevation model to assess hydropower resource potential. To demonstrate HPAT, we implement the models for a privately-owned run-of-river facility on Falls Creek outside of Sweet Home, Oregon, USA. We use an ensemble of Global Climate Models (GCMs) for two future climate scenarios to project a plausible range of future changes at this site. For the Falls Creek facility, HPAT projects that the timing of peak streamflow will shift from spring to winter and that mean annual hydropower potential will likely decrease slightly from average 1980e2010 historic conditions through the end of the 21st century. All inputs to HPAT are globally available, except for streamflow observations necessary for calibration.

Systematic high-resolution assessment of global hydropower potential

“…Recent studies have already made accurate hydropower potential estimations for specific areas [ 15 – 17 ]. Different types of hydrological data and approaches can be used, such as remote sensing and hydrologic modeling, as used for poorly gauged basins [ 18 , 19 ]. Systematic methods applicable at national and regional levels have been generated as well [ 20 – 23 ].…”

Standard Modular Hydropower: Case Study on Modular Facility Design

“…For example, a national-scale US assessment used a geospatial approach to establish an upper technical limit on new development based on topography and hydrology (Kao et al 2014;Pasha et al 2014). Other Geographic Information System approaches couple hydrologic modeling with digital elevation data sets to identify promising sites for development (Soulis et al 2016;Rojanamon, Chaisomphob, and Bureekul 2009;Punys et al 2011;Mosier, Sharp, and Hill 2016;Garegnani et al 2018). These models tend to identify hydrologic and landscape features of natural systems that are compatible with the geometric features and constraints of conventional hydroelectric systems.…”