An Assessment of Reservoir Filling Policies under a Changing Climate for Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam
Abstract
Climate variability and change cause unsteady hydrologic response, commonly experienced through varying river flows. These variations affect the performance and reliability of water resources dependent systems, including domestic, agriculture, energy, and the environment, with economic implications. Long-term design and operation of these systems is therefore inherently uncertain, producing copious risks at time-scales of months to decades. Yet evaluation of system performance under non-stationary climate conditions is typically ignored. Here we demonstrate the potential performance of Ethiopia's forthcoming Grand Renaissance hydropower dam on the Blue Nile River, subject to coincident climate change and reservoir filling policies. Presently, no agreed-upon reservoir retention policy exists between Ethiopia and downstream countries, even though construction has already begun. We will present a tool designed to allow users to select expected future climate conditions and reservoir filling rates, from a stochastic perspective. Additionally, the maximum reservoir volume may also be varied. Major outputs include hydropower generation and downstream flow for use by policy-makers. Ethiopia's desire to rapidly expand hydropower dams on the Nile constitutes an enormous financial investment and latent risk, with further implications on streamflow reduction to Sudan and Egypt, and a need for multi-national energy contracts, necessitating proper advanced planning.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.H24F..05K
- Keywords:
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- 1807 HYDROLOGY / Climate impacts;
- 1833 HYDROLOGY / Hydroclimatology;
- 1857 HYDROLOGY / Reservoirs