Assessing the Profitability of Changing a Turbine for a Hydroelectric Power Plant Based on Long-Period Water Gauge Readings

Background

Increased need for “clean” electric energy in recent years is fundamental for raising a question whether a modernization of old and frequently dilapidated infrastructure will be more beneficial than building completely new installations in a different location, bearing in mind however, that production assessment without the necessary hydrological data production estimates may prove to be incorrect and usually overestimated. In cases in which the answer proves to be positive for the former option, the next step should be defining the technical capabilities and challenges (at the site) facing the expected investment. In that circumstances the cost of turbine that can be as high as couple of hundred thousand dollars for a 100 kW class machinery usually dominates overall investment expenditures for small HPP. It is therefore a necessity that some elements of economic analysis should be an integral part of an assessment model since a financing of investments requires realistic planning of income & costs, return rates as well as awareness of independent factors (natural disasters like drought or floods, regulation of the river upstream HPP activities) possibly acting on the profitability of modernization should be taken into account to some extent.

A helpful, preliminary tool in solving this issues can be for example a SWOT/TOWS analysis with strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats clearly defined and connected with each other by mutual dependencies. In the literature integrated technical & economic approach relating to the small HPP topic is rarely seen.