Rapidly alternating energy demand, resulting from a larger share of non-regulable power, has led to the emergence of various energy markets. This opens up more opportunities for the hydropower industry to increase revenues. Increased regulability and good inflow forecasts reduce the risk for producers when they bid their production into these markets. In the worst case, incorrect inflow forecasts mean that the producer has to buy expensive power in the market to cover its commitments.
- Report: Radiation input from geostationary satellite (in Norwegian)
Over the past ten years, the industry has developed inflow models that can make use of information with a major influence on inflow to a greater extent and better than before. In the upcoming project for the hydropower industry, a large part of the focus will be on finding how this information can best be utilised to reduce producers' risk.
Although precipitation and temperature observations and forecasts are overall the most important information for inflow models, snowmelt accounts for more than 50% of inflow over a season in most catchments in the Nordic region. Snowmelt is governed by the energy balance, and radiation makes up a substantial part of this. The effect of using radiation information in snowmelt calculations has been documented (Bruland et al., 2001), but generally poor access to radiation data has meant that radiation has not been a focus. With distributed models, this information will be of great value and can be decisive for the uncertainty in an inflow forecast and thereby the risk in market operations.
Radiation information has gradually become available through several sources, such as direct observations, satellite images and meteorological models. However, the industry has no good methodology available for assimilating and preparing this information for their inflow models. This project seeks to solve this challenge and in this way reduce the risk of incorrectly forecast snowmelt episodes.
The project is developing a new service. This service makes use of radiation information in a new way and will develop methods for making this information available to hydropower producers and for putting it to use.
This is an IPN project (Innovation Project for the Industrial Sector) that is partly funded by the Research Council of Norway.