Master's Thesis Award of Merit In les than 10 years.

Master's Thesis Award of Merit

In les than 10 years, 220 dams representing 20% of U hydropower capacity will be subjected to re-licensing. Throughout the duration of their original licenses, these facilities were operated with little attempt to mitigate their negative result on fish and recreation. Following re-licensing, however, just discovered hydropower licenses will likely contain provisions designed to increase recreational opportunities and to improve fish habitat and fish passage. Therefore, the motivation behind this work is to assess whether and to what stretch there is a tradeoff between environmental improvements and hydropower production.

While principally previous work on this control has focused on large multipurpose dams that are causing significant declines in fish population, this earlier research may not apply to smaller hydropower plants. To expand our understanding of the energy/environment tradeoff, this thesis focuses onward the re-licensing provisions of smaller hydraulically linked facilities. Specifically, this work examines the re-licensing provisions for 14 dams forward New York's Raquette River, namely minimum stream requirements, reservoir elevation requirements, and turbine upgrades.

To assess for what reason re-licensing will alter the timing and total quantity of hydropower production, this thesis examines hydropower production decisions before and after re-licensing. Using the dams onward the Raquette River as a case subject of attention a nonlinear model is evolveed to simulate the facilities' hydraulic linkages, physical parameters, and the license-based requirements. This mould simulates a typical day of production, for each of brace seasons: the walleyed pike spawning season and a summer period.

After comparing simulated historic release decisions with generation following re-licensing, a number of be the effects were clear. First, the independent adoption of turbine upgrades would increase total and peak electricity generation, while the adoption of minimum deliquesce requirements alone would decrease total and peak electricity production. It should be noted that reservoir elevation requirements did not appear to have an power in our one-day model. inferior when these requirements are implemented simultaneously, as is the case in the Raquette River Agreement, total hydropower production would actually increase during days with average inflows. Likewise, peak period production could also increase when facility operators have the discretion to use reservoir storage. When inflows are les than approximately 800-1000 cf and agriculturists do not have access to reservoir storage, however, the joint implementation of minimum sweep along requirements and turbine upgrades could cause peak period electricity generation to decrease below historic rates. Although these findings may not be typical of larger arrangements they do suggest that hydropower re-licensing which includes turbine upgrades and minimum run requirements could result in a snare electricity increase for carefully managed small hydropower systems

Kyna Lynn Powers

Cornell University

Advisor: L Duane Chapman

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