Integrated hydrological risk analysis for hydropower projects

Abstract

The production of electricity from hydropower is exclusively determined by the availability of water. Upstream water use such as irrigation and drinking water supply, down-stream constraints and climate change are just some of the factors that can pose a risk to the hy-dropower producer. The relationships between these factors can in many river basins be very complex, introducing large uncertainties to future revenues. Tools to analyze the wider under-standing of the hydrological risks in river basins with multiple and geographically distributed water uses have to a limited extent been applied in the long-term planning of hydropower pro-jects. The use of such tools will reduce the financial risk of a project, as well as providing a ba-sis for a dialogue between stakeholders. We have reviewed a set of different tools/approaches to assess the hydrological risks of hydropower projects, which include; i) hydrological models with functions to run scenarios with climate change and different allocation and priorities be-tween sectors, ii) integration of model simulation and expert judgement using Bayesian network methodology and iii) other risk assessment approaches, including the decision-tree framework, as proposed by the World Bank