Abstract:
Reservoir operation has become a major focus of water resources planning and
management. Traditionally, reservoir operation is based on heuristic procedures, embracing
rule curves and, to a certain extent, subjective judgements by the operator. Water use
involves a large number of stakeholders with different objectives, and real time operation
is expected to provide balanced solutions between often conflicting objectives. The study
area is the Genale Dawa dam3 catchment situated at the Genale Dawa River Basin in
Ethiopia. The objective of this study is to develop real time operation of multi-purpose
reservoirs and to evaluate suitability of GD-3 sub-basin for surface irrigation development.
In this study, CMORPH satellite rainfall product was used for streamflow forecasting using
Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model. Real-time operation was performed taking real-
time and forecast information about reservoir levels, reservoir inflows and water demands
into account using MODSIM model. The result shows that the average energy generated
by GD-3 plant is 1,962.24GWh/yr, which is greater than the average energy in the
feasibility study for GD-3 hydropower plant, 1640.0 GWh/yr by an amount of
322.24GWh/yr and annual volume of water about 3648.7 Mm3
will be released for
downstream water requirement through the controlled outlets. This volume of water has the
capacity to use for irrigation since the suitability model revealed that about 55.83%
(136138.2ha) of lands in the sub basin were in the range of highly suitable to marginally
suitable for surface irrigation development.
