Assessing climate impacts on hydropower production: the case of the Toce River Basin
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The aim of the presented study is to assess the impacts of climate change on hydropower
production of the Toce Alpine river basin in Italy. For the meteorological forcing of future
scenarios, time series were generated by applying a quantile-based error-correction approach to
downscale simulations from two regional climate models to point scale. Beside a general
temperature increase, climate models simulate an increase of mean annual precipitation
distributed over spring, autumn and winter, and a significant decrease in summer. A model of the
hydropower system was driven by discharge time series for future scenarios, simulated with a
spatially distributed hydrological model, with the simulation goal of defining the reservoirs
management rule that maximizes the economic value of the hydropower production. The
assessment of hydropower production for future climate till 2050 respect to current climate (2001–
2010) showed an increase of production in autumn, winter and spring, and a reduction in June
and July. Significant change in the reservoir management policy is expected due to anticipation of
the date when the maximum volume of stored water has to be reached and an increase of the
reservoir drawdown during August and September to prepare storage capacity for autumn
inflows.
production of the Toce Alpine river basin in Italy. For the meteorological forcing of future
scenarios, time series were generated by applying a quantile-based error-correction approach to
downscale simulations from two regional climate models to point scale. Beside a general
temperature increase, climate models simulate an increase of mean annual precipitation
distributed over spring, autumn and winter, and a significant decrease in summer. A model of the
hydropower system was driven by discharge time series for future scenarios, simulated with a
spatially distributed hydrological model, with the simulation goal of defining the reservoirs
management rule that maximizes the economic value of the hydropower production. The
assessment of hydropower production for future climate till 2050 respect to current climate (2001–
2010) showed an increase of production in autumn, winter and spring, and a reduction in June
and July. Significant change in the reservoir management policy is expected due to anticipation of
the date when the maximum volume of stored water has to be reached and an increase of the
reservoir drawdown during August and September to prepare storage capacity for autumn
inflows.
Date Issued
2016-03-23
Date Acceptance
2016-03-11
Citation
Climate, 2016, 4 (2)
ISSN
2225-1154
Publisher
MDPI
Journal / Book Title
Climate
Volume
4
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Publication Status
Published