HERI – Research Actions Database

Description

Hydropower as the world’s largest source of renewable energy still has a high unused potential to be explored in times of a changing global energy policy. The economic and ecological evaluation of new hydropower developments rely on a number of environmental conditions, such as key hydrological parameters. For example, the major drivers of the reservoir storage capacity over time, reservoir life time (and related reinvestment time), and also a major driver of the operations costs are directly related to the sediment regime and sediment trapping. These are defined by the external environmental boundary conditions. However, a typical situation at pre-planning stage is the absence of such data, especially when extended areas and river systems shall be investigated with the aim of a regional development. This introduces major opportunities for cost optimizations and improved sustainability of development plans. An easy, direct access to key hydrological and water quality parameters, for selectable time periods covering actual, recent seasonal or historic data is demanded: such a solution, for any remote defined measurement station in rivers and surface waters worldwide, allows that decisions in hydropower investments can be based on the most holistic data set collection available. Such a desired, affordable solution will be made available online on the HYPOS portal, providing essential assets for hydro power managers, planners and decision makers in their work. The subscription portal brings together – on a sustainable commercial base – a) high-quality satellite-based measurements for historic time periods and actual continuous monitoring, b) up-to-date hydrological parameters from modelling, with nowcasting on various orderable levels of detail, c) available in-situ data and d) integrated baseline and environmental impact assessments, based on these data, e.g. on sedimentation regimes or trapping. Knowledge will be gained about essentially needed parameters, such as sediment composition, inflow/outflow volumes, sedimentation, evaporation rates, bank and bed abrasion, plankton and higher aquatic vegetation development. The service answers the most crucial faced issues on different levels, starting with a global perspective in medium temporal and spatial resolution and will range up to local high and very high-resolution products.

Organisations

• EOMAP GmbH & Co.KG

Funding

• European funding

Specific Funding Sources:
European Commission

Level of Action:

Applications

Small-hydro, Large-hydro, Run-of-the-River, Storage Hydropower, Pumped Storage

Keywords

Digitalization, Networking, Remote sensing, Sediments, Sustainability

Areas of Research

Last Updated: 22/02/2024 09:43

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