RUNOFF MODELLING AND IDENTIFICATION OF SMALL-SCALE HYDROPOWER POTENTIAL SITES ON BILATE WATERSHED USING ARC-GIS INTERFACE WITH PYTHON

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