Aquaplan project

Working paper : Dynamic management of hydropower-irrigation systems

by A. Tilmant¹ , D. Pinte² , and Q. Goor²

¹ Dept of Management and Institutions, UNESCO-IHE (Delft, The Netherlands)

²Dept of Environmental Sciences and Land Use Planning, Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium)

Abstract : This paper compares the performance of static and dynamic management strategies for a water resources system characterized by important hydropower and agricultural sectors. In the dynamic approach, water for crop irrigation is no longer considered as a static asset but is rather allocated so as to maximize the overall benefits taking into account the latest hydrologic conditions and the productivities of other users throughout the basin. The complexity of the decision-making process, which requires the continuous evaluation of numerous trade-offs, calls for the use of integrated hydrologic-economic models. The two water resources allocation problems discussed in this paper are solved using stochastic dual dynamic programming (SDDP) formulations. As upstream farmers are facing a coalition of downstream (non-consumptive) users, they suffer the most and must therefore be compensated for increasing the availability of water downstream. This paper also presents a methodology to derive the individual contribution of downstream non-consumptive users, i.e. hydropower plants, to the financial compensation of upstream farmers. The analysis of simulation results reveals that, on average, the annual benefits obtained with the dynamic allocation process are 6% higher that those derived from a static allocation.