Abstract:
Electricity is vital resources in today quests for prosperity and economic advancement. Ethiopia
has abundant water resources and ideal geography for hydropower development. The country’s
80% of population live in rural communities face energy access challenges. In the Bilate
watershed of Rift Valley Basin, where a predominantly rural and limited access to reliable
electricity continues to undermine socioeconomic development, reflecting a broader global
challenge faced by communities. The objectives of this study to model runoff by hybrid
techniques, to identify sustainable small HP site in area and prioritizes feasible site based on
technical, topological, geological and environmental criteria. A Digital elevation model and
stream network used to locate potential site with threshold head of 15 meter along forth and 5th
order stream. Deep learning model Generated Recurrent unit (GRU), long short-term memory
(LSTM) and Bi-Long short Term memory (LSTM) used to model runoff by hybrid with Soil
conservation system- curve number (SCS-CN) method. Hybrid model performances evaluated
using mean absolute error (MAE), Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), Mean square error (MSE)
and coefficient of determination (R2). Novel Generated Recurrent unit Hybrid (GRU-Hybrid)
model out perform with Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency and coefficient of determination (R2) during
training value 0.905, and 0.911 and testing value 0.89 and 0.894. To estimate discharge flow
duration curve is developed and flow transferred by area ratio method for ungauged site. The
identified potential power site ranked using Analytical hierarchy methods based on the ratio of
six criteria. There are 31 potential site identified with estimated power output of 37.92 at 50%,
29.2 at 70% 21.1 at 90% and 19.34MW at 95% respectively. The overall rank implied the
selected site code 12 and 3-ranked 1st and d 2nd with their suitability index for implementation
of small hydropower plant. The study Recommended Economic analysis and Environmental
impact assessment before installation in area and detail design of all component will required
to install and generate energy for rural area
