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Hydro Resource Evaluation Tool
physical characteristics of a hydro site
Tier 1. Scoping Study
The aim of this scoping study of river flow availability is to provide a methodology for people with little or no prior knowledge of hydrology or ‘how much water a river can provide’. This section provides guidance to enable a rapid, low cost estimate of discharge/flow, hence the resource availability.
This section describes methods to produce the most basic of flow statistics for a feasibility assessment, the mean flow, and thus will not consider the flow variability throughout the year. If at this stage you whish to look at variability of flow you should proceed to section ‘Tier 2. Intermediate - Desktop Assessment’.
This section includes:
- Information about your catchment – Guidance on identifying information relating to your catchment;
- Transposing measured data to estimate mean flow – Guidance on identifying readily available measured data and transposing gauged flows to estimate your mean flow;
- Map based estimate of mean flow – Guidance on how to estimate your mean flow using map based data;
- Rapid measurement of a low flow – Guidance on how to produce rapid field measurements at the site of interest to give an idea of the residual flow;
- Conclusion.
You should first find out information about your catchment. Then you will be able to estimate a rough estimate of mean flow for which two methods are described. If you have measured data available then you should estimate mean flow using both methods and compare the results. If there is no measured data available then you should estimate your mean flow using map based data. If at this stage you would like a rough estimate of a low flow, hence your residual flow, then you should conduct a rapid measurement.
