Small Hydro or Large Hydro? The Viability of Low Head Hydropower in Developing Countries under Current and Future Conditions PhD Candidate: Simbi Hatchard Supervisors: Paul Bates, Sam Williamson, and Francesca Pianosi, UoB

Large Hydropower – Good or Bad? Renewable Energy Water Supply resilience - reservoir Flood Control Large Hydropower Upstream Inundation Disruption of Fisheries Turn this slide into Changes in Water Quality River Fragmentation Economic Issues www.wisecdt.org

Small Hydropower instead of Large? Lower Environmental / Ecological Impact Lower up front investment Small Hydropower (defined as less than 10MW) Predictable power output compared to other renewables Long life and lower maintenance requirements Now one of the key research questions I want to ask is “to what extent could many SHP be used to meet energy needs” Firstly, the literature seems to suggest that the term small hydropower is always more environmentally friendly, or environmentally benign. Is this true? First, what is small hydropower? It is defined by generating capacity – however, this isn’t necessarily indicative of its environmental impact alone, since there are three type of small hydropower: dam, ror, diversion. The effects of implementing a small hydropower project on a river are very site specific, so there is a risk of over generalising. This leads to the first www.wisecdt.org

Small Hydropower? www.wisecdt.org Is Small Hydropower necessarily better? Lower efficiency of power conversion than LHP No ancillary benefits of a reservoir Lower distance of transmissibility Cumulative Environmental effects uncertain Social Acceptability not a given www.wisecdt.org

Proposed Research Research Aim: Research Questions: www.wisecdt.org Build a Large Scale Hydrodynamic Model integrating SHP siting algorithms, economic analyses, and environmental assessment to quantify cumulative impacts and trade offs associated with SHP development, as well as forecasting performance into the future. Research Questions: Where is the economically, environmentally and socially acceptable SHP located? What are the cumulative economic, environmental, and social implications of widespread SHP implementation? How good is SHP over the long term? How would many SHP compare with few large hydro? www.wisecdt.org

Research Gaps Identified Cumulative Environmental Impacts – is SHP on a large scale environmentally benign? Forecasting performance of SHP into the future under population and climate change Social impacts / acceptance of SHP www.wisecdt.org

Proposed Study Catchment The Zambezi Basin, located in Sub Saharan Africa, is the proposed study catchment, for the following reasons: Appreciable amounts of untapped Hydropower Hydropower Development stands to benefit many in a region afflicted by low HDI’s Hydropower ought to be developed responsibly, with the environment and other water users kept in mind While SHP in the UK fulfils only xxx and is projected to not change significantly, there are many countires around the world where the SHP potential is significant, especially Asia. Problem: many of these fall in data sparse cathcments www.wisecdt.org

Proposed Study Methodology Baseline (Current State, Do Nothing) Energy Model Future State, Do Nothing Hydrodynamic Model (DEM + VIC + LISFLOOD) Multi-objective Optimisation GIS Model Current State, Do Something Population – Dynamics Model Future State, Do Something www.wisecdt.org

Issues SHP is by nature very site specific. Limit to what can be done using remote sensing data. Fill in social data by structured interviews / public consultations on the ground? Can you do this at all points in the model?. To what extent can you generalize this data across regions? Computational power required? Uncertainty in forecasting future environmental / economic / social conditions Limit on vertical resolution of SRTM data. www.wisecdt.org