Determination of hydroelectric capacity for ungauged catchments: A case study in Turkey

Abstract

One major obstacle to using flow duration and mass flow curves in the design of hydropower capacity, water allocation, energy output, etc. is the absence of data and information, especially at the tributary reaches. For hydropower design to accurately estimate generation capacity and protect the environment, long-term resource availability—represented by the discharge—must be precisely calculated. The gauged flow record will be used to predict discharges as soon as long-term gauged flows for the site catchments are available. Methods for estimating resource availability at the ungauged location are necessary, though, because the majority of river reaches are ungauged. A single or more long-term gauged catchments that are assumed to have similar hydrological characteristics to the ungauged location are often the source of local hydrometric data. The use of resource availability estimation techniques for hydropower design will be covered in this study, along with the potential use of local hydrometric data to support these estimations. We'll use a case study catchment in Turkey to talk about the uncertainties surrounding these methods.