A pragmatic approach to assess the climate resilience of hydro projects

Abstract

There is no doubt that the planet is warming quickly. What is uncertain, and hugely so, is the impact the warming will have on the climatologic and hydrologic processes that directly influence performance of existing and planned water-resources related projects, for example hydropower. Therefore, the prospect of climate change has become a key issue for the large dams/reservoirs community. This paper provides first an overview of the increasing awareness of climate change impacts on the performance and reliability of hydro projects within this community. Then, it presents a pragmatic approach to assess the climate resilience of hydro projects. This approach fully complies with the Hydropower Sector Climate Resilience Guide released by International Hydropower Association in 2019 [1]. The case study is a hydropower project on St Paul River in Liberia. The paper focuses on the methods and results of the Phase 3 climate stress test, namely the power generation performance under a wide range of different possible future climate scenarios. The modelling cascade is formed by the hydrological model GR4J and a hydropower model supported by Mike Hydro Basin software. It is used to simulate 35+ years of daily hydropower operation.