A New Application of Flow Duration Curve (FDC) in Designing Run-of-River Power Plants

Luisa Liucci (), Daniela Valigi () and Stefano Casadei ()

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2014, vol. 28, issue 3, 895 pages

Abstract: The present study evaluates the effects of river run-off regime and hydrological uncertainty on the hydroelectric production of a run-of-river power plant. The mean annual energy from a plant was modeled as a function of run-off regime and design flow, by means of a procedure developed on the mean annual Flow Duration Curves (FDCs) of 15 sample basins in the Umbria Region (Central Italy). Results show that energy output decreases from constant to torrential regimes, following a potential function, and that, the greater the design flow, the greater the rate of decrease. The treatment and validation of these results provided a useful tool for easy identification of optimal design flow, according to the hydrological features of the basin and the target hydroelectric production at the station. Analyses of FDCs with a 20-year return period also showed that the decrease in energy production in dry years and its increase in wet years, compared with the mean annual value, are linearly linked to the design flow. In the present context of possible climate change, this result is presented as the possibility of partially controlling the effects of positive or negative flow rate trends. The results reported here can be applied to any kind of river and hydraulic technology at the power station. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Capacity factor; Design flow; Flow duration curve; Hydrological uncertainty; Hydropower; Run-off regime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-014-0523-4 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:28:y:2014:i:3:p:881-895

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-014-0523-4

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().