North West Hydro Resource Model

About the project

about the project

Work Packages

Work Package 1: Demand and Economics

WP Leader:

Co-Investigators:

The contribution from economics will address essentially two issues. The first relates to the narrowly identified costs and revenues associated with different turbine technologies, both existing and nascent. The second relates to the wider environmental aspects of the programme, in particular the costs and benefits for the community e.g. loss of amenity, degradation of the physical environment etc.

In order to address these questions, we shall develop a model that captures the micro-economic aspects of the process of transforming inputs into outputs. In developing this model we shall take into account both demand and supply considerations. More particularly, we shall identify the factors that determine demand for generating output, and the output that can be generated under different technological conditions.

This will enable us to compare different systems in terms of their profitability. More generally, we shall use data from the other sections of the project along with publicly available data to address the environmental issues that arise from the use of the different technologies. The information derived within this section will be formulated so as to support decision making.

Thus the planned input on this project is to attempt to measure the direct costs and the wider 'environmental' costs of the proposed technologies.

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Work Package 2: River Flow Assessment

WP Leader:

Co-Investigators:

Within the United Kingdom there are over 250,000 river reaches mapped at a scale of 1:50,000, in contrast there are approximately 1600 permanent gauging stations and thus the majority of catchments are ungauged. The North-West is typical of the UK in that there are gauging stations on each of its major rivers that enable flow duration curves to be developed but the majority of smaller river systems are ungauged. However, it is within these smaller catchments that the majority of opportunities for low head and small hydropower exist. To address this need CEH have developed software systems for estimating hydropower generation potential (the HydrA package) based upon estimates of the flow duration curve for ungauged catchments (the Low Flows 2000 system). Low Flows 2000 is the standard system used by the Environment Agency for generating estimates of river flows within ungauged catchments and incorporating the impacts of water use (reservoirs, abstractions and discharges) upon these natural estimates of river flow. Whilst Low Flows 2000 estimates provide a good basis for identifying potential hydropower sites, for detailed design and estimation of environmental consequence there remain a number of research issues that currently constrain development opportunities:

  1. The uncertainty in the prediction of flow duration curves needs to be constrained to minimise the uncertainty in energy production to demonstrate the viability of a scheme. Currently this is undertaken in an ad hoc manner with little rigour. The challenge is identify how short record flow data (down to individual flow measurements) can be used to constrain the uncertainty in the prediction of flow duration statistics within ungauged catchments in the North West, and how does this hydrological uncertainty propagate through to an uncertainty in the estimation of energy production?
  2. Current scheme viability is defined on long term estimates of flow regimes. A more pertinent question is 'What will be the likely evolution of energy generation over the period of capital borrowing and payback, and can this be estimated within ungauged catchments?'
  3. In pursuit of generation capacity scheme promoters are looking at the utilisation of higher flows. However the question remains of how robust are designs to the impact of high flows (and in some locations high flow induced sediment transport)
  4. Finally, for larger schemes the potential impact of catchment and climate change on energy generation (though latter might not be significant over the design lifetime of a scheme) needs to be answered. This is currently ignored within current design practices.

Work Package 3: Engineering Options

WP Leader:

Co-Investigators:

Accepting that economic benefit is the driver for installation, what is needed is a scoping of the turbine options for different resource, environment and demand at any specific location. A model will be developed that will take data generated by other components of the system namely hydrology (e.g. water levels, heads, flow duration curve), demand (e.g. household size) and characteristics of physical environment (e.g. geology, bed stability) and devise parameters to filter different designs for their suitability. Each design will have its own specific characteristics and major components including storage, culvert, penstock, power station and tailrace system whose values will be adjusted for each location.

The options will be passed on to other sections of the overall system so that they can be assessed for their environmental implications, public acceptability and overall economic cost. Data will also be supplied to the resource capacity section so that any impact on the hydrological resource can be relayed for inclusion in future estimates.

Once a decision has been proposed, selecting one of the turbine designs the situation will be reassessed and the specification for the installation will be worked up in detail. Characteristics of size, construction and reliability will be derived and detailed costings for optional modification of the design assessed. One of the big areas of uncertainty will be the full economic cost of the plant and its installation. We need to include financing charges, the cost of connection to the grid, access to the site, maintenance costs, decommissioning and site remediation in addition to the cost of the rotating plant. The exploitation mode will influence the development and options for different strategies will be included. For example the electrical connection may be isolated from the grid, linked directly to the grid or passed through a household supply (considering safety issues connected with feeding a supply back into a house wiring system) and only pass to the grid when the demand is satisfied. Additional characteristics will be considered so that full life cycle analysis of the device can be calculated.

Work Package 4: Environmental Implications

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Co-Investigators:

Environment is often seen as a major stumbling block with need for an Environment Statement (under Town & Country Planning Regulations – Assessment of Environmental Effects). The currently ill defined requirements for environmental protection with regard to hydro schemes need to be reviewed and re-formulated. The ad hoc approaches to defining the impacts of hydro schemes on the in-stream requirements of aquatic flora and fauna are often cited by developers as the most significant barrier to the successful promotion of schemes. These need to be revised and a new framework to assess these impacts and identify appropriate mitigation options needs to be developed. There are a number of tools in use for this such as the River Habitat Survey (EA, 2003), RIVPACS (CEH) and Mean Trophic Ranking (CEH) which can be applied to measure the current environmental state. These cover both the physical environment, through the RHS, and the biological environment, through RIVPACS and MTR. The Water Framework Directive requires that water bodies be maintained in, or improved to, good status. Good status includes chemical, biological and physical components and it is therefore unlikely that a large number of undeveloped sites would be considered by the Environment Agency for low-head hydro-electric installations

Outputs from the environmental component are needed to identify the effect the environment has upon the physical components of the turbine installation. High sediment loads, eutrophic waters, or highly acidic waters may reduce the life of the turbine or increase the required maintenance. This would reduce the economic efficiency of the turbine, possibly below the the level acceptable for installing the turbine in the first place. It is important that these environmental factors be considered throughout the decision making process and monitoring of stream characteristics will be performed prior to, during and post installation.

Research issues:

  1. Examine different options to EIA (RIVPACS, RHS, MTR, number and timing of visits) to guarantee effectiveness for different styles and sizes of turbine.
  2. Design of monitoring system to identify impacts once systems have been installed (and relating them back to EIA).
  3. Co-ordinate regional datasets and spatially co-register.
  4. Investigate environmental and biological effects of changing river flow.
  5. Develop fuzzy decision tree.

Work Package 5: Public Acceptability and Engagement

WP Leader:

Co-Investigators:

How the public engage with hydro technology is a crucial question for implementation in practice. Ordinary people are:

  1. potential adopters of the technology at a micro household level
  2. potential participants in collective community processes for the adoption of technology at a micro level (for example for community buildings or groups of households) and;
  3. potential neighbours of technology installations at micro or meso levels who may in some circumstances be concerned about the local impacts of the installation (visual, ecological, noise etc.).

In all three respects comparatively little is known about how members of the public might view hydro technologies, either in the general abstract or in particular forms in particular physical and social contexts. There is therefore an important research task to develop these understandings, to try and identify key factors which shape perceptions and potential patterns of adoption or resistance, and to develop processes of engagement (which might include various forms of communication, participation, facilitation of collective action etc..) which are appropriate for different technologies, scales and contexts of installation. In this respect it will be important to recognise the diversity of both publics and of stakeholder groups who may have an interest in the installation and impacts of low head hydro technologies (such as fisheries groups, landowners, tourism industry, conservation groups, local councils).

This aspect of the research will interface closely with an ongoing 3 year project on public engagement with renewable energy, funded under the TSEC programme and involving Lancaster as a partner. There will be considerable synergies for both research programmes.

Work Package 6: Dissemination

WP Leader:

Co-Investigators:

Timeliness

The Energy Review will be reassessing national policy on energy and is likely to reinforce the Government’s call for research into diverse sources of power. Hydro is an area offering a relatively untapped resource available throughout the North-West. One large benefit of individuals being more closely involved with meeting their own energy needs is that their view of energy use changes and they tend to become more conservative.

Novelty

The novelty of this approach is that it is looking to identify appropriate solutions to different situations and locations. The outputs will not be a standard ‘one-size fits all’, but offer a range of options that will have different costs and values. The approach will identify the advantages of different solutions, not only in financial terms but also through environmental, cultural and wider economics. The opportunity for a large number of households to exploit their local environment to benefit both themselves/communities and the environment is novel

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