COST EFFECTIVE PLANNING AND OPTIMIZED LAYOUT OF RUN-OF-RIVER HYDROPOWER SCHEMES

Abstract

Energy has been universally recognized as one of the most important inputs for economic growth and human development. There is a strong two-way relationship between economic development and energy consumption. On one hand, growth of an economy, with its global competitiveness, hinges on the availability of cost-effective and environmentally benign energy sources, and on the other hand, the level of economic development has been observed to be reliant on the energy demand. In the recent years, India's energy consumption has been increasing at one of the fastest rates in the world due to population growth and economic development To meet the ever increasing demand, it is necessary to identify the renewable sources of energy due to associated problems with conventional sources of energy. The hydropower projects are one of the sustainable and environmentally sound ways to develop the new energy sources. India has the ample potential for hydropower development. Cost of the hydropower project depends on mainly two variables head and capacity. Keeping this in view the present study titled "Cost Effective Planning and Optimized Layout of Run-of-River Hydropower Schemes" was planned. The data relating to cost, discharge, head, capacity and year of costing of projects were collected for various sites in different states of India. The cost of projects were estimated in different years so to compare the costs, these were brought to present level by taking 5 % annual escalation. Different types of alternative layouts of run-of-river schemes were considered and the cost of each layout were calculated by a correlation between cost and sensitive parameters of each component of layout. Based on the collected cost data, analysis of cost was carried out and correlations for cost of different components were developed considering cost sensitive parameters. The total installation cost of civil works varies from 66,000 lacs to 1115 lacs for the discharge ranging from 1.5 cumecs to 19.5 cumecs. To calculate the annual energy, the head and discharge were selected within a range of run-of-river hydropower scheme. The annual energy was calculated by considering different combinations of head and discharge over a trend of flow duration curve. The per unit cost of generation was calculated for different combinations of layout