Small hydropower and GIS for sustainable growth in energy sector Surekha Dudhani Bharati Vidyapeeth’s College of Engineering A-4, Paschim Vihar, Rothak Road, NewDelhi-110063, India Phone :+91 11 25275443, Fax: +91 11 25275444 surekha65@rediffmail.com A.K.Sinha Bharati Vidyapeeth’s College of Engineering A-4, Paschim Vihar, Rothak Road, NewDelhi-110063, India S.S.Inamdar Bharati Vidyapeeth’s College of Engineering A-4, Paschim Vihar, Rothak Road, NewDelhi-110063, India Abstract: Importance of rapid growth in electricity capacity for development of the nation is well recognized and has been emphasized time and again. It is also clear that for a large country like India, the energy resources required for sustaining the desirable per capita electricity consumption is very large. The growing concern over environmental degradation caused by fossil fuel based systems, opposition to large hydropower projects on grounds of displacement of land and population, environmental problems with nuclear fuel based systems and the ever-rising shortage of power highlights the need for tapping alternate energy sources for power generation. Amongst the alternate sources utilization of hydropower on a smaller scale (small, mini and micro hydropower) has become the thrust area for sustainable growth in the power sector. Estimated potential sites are in the order of 450 and development of this potential is challenging as bulk of the resources are in difficult / inaccessible terrains in the Northern and North-Eastern Regions. Moreover, hydropower projects needs to co-relate large data from various sources. In this GIS plays very important role in every stage of planning, development and implementation. In GIS environment, geospatial data are better maintained in a standard format, revision and updating, search, analysis and representation of information is easier and hence time and money is saved. The information from satellite data interpretation and other descriptive data can be merged into GIS, thus generating a unique database for hydropower project. Introduction: India being a developing country has witnessed a rapidly growing energy needs owing to fast industrialization. Sustainable and qualitative growth for developing economics and habitat requires increased energy input from various resources while maintaining balance in the ecosystem during exploitation. Sustainable development requires the management and conservation of natural resources base and the orientation of technological and institutional changes in such a manner as to ensure the attainment and continued satisfaction of human needs for present and future generations. Present scenario of power sector, issues in the power sector, various resources for power generation and alternate energy sources for power generation, small hydro for power generation and data handling in geographical information system are discussed in details. In this paper utilization of remote sensing data as well as data from conventional sources for development of hydropower projects is proposed to handle in GIS environment and scope and limitations are discussed. Energy scenario in India: Over the years the electricity supply in India has made significant progress. The installed capacity of the electricity supply undertakings (utilization) in the country over 50 years is increased from 1700 MW in 1950 to 112058.42 MW in March 2004 and electrification of more than 500,000 villages is impressive in absolute terms (Figure 1). Efforts have been made to supply electricity to larger sections of population by way of rural electrification programmes [1].  Figure 1 : Growth of Electric Power Generation The economy of India is expected to grow annually by 8 to 10 percent. Together with the improving living standard, results in exponential growth of demand for electricity. The currently available capacity of nearly 120 GW is not adequate to meet the present demand. The Indian government has therefore initiated the program ‘Power for all on demand by 2012’. The primary goal of the program is the addition of an extra 100 GW of capacity by 2012 [2]. Resources for power generation: The energy resources for generation of electricity in the country are coal, lignite, oil and natural gas, nuclear and hydropower. Development of the non-conventional sources of energy such as wind, solar energy, biogas and geothermal, small hydropower, co-generation has also started now. Coal based thermal power stations are presently the mainstay of power development and this is likely to be in the immediate future also. India is endowed with 6% of coal reserves of the world. The coal reserves in the country as per the assessment carried out in January 2003, down to the depth of 1200m stood at 240.78 billion tones and are unevenly distributed in the country [3]. As per the estimates by Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Limited (OIL) balance recoverable reserves of crude oil natural gas stood at 732 MT and 763 BCM (billion cubic meters) respectively by March 2002. The discovery of 7 TCF (trillion cubic feet) of natural gas by Reliance in its KG-DWN-9813 block in the KG (Krishna-Godhavery) basin was the highest of 2002. This not only improved the energy security of the country by boosting possible gas production by 50 %, but also raised the prospects of Indian sedimentary basins in the international arena [4]. Nuclear power generation made a beginning in the year 1969 at Tarapore with a capacity of 2x210 MWe based on Boiling Water Reactor technology. In the proposed 3-stage development plan for nuclear power, a programme of 300,000 MWe can be supported by the available reserves and indigenes technology but this development is closely associated with serious environmental concern [5].Petroleum fuel is being imported on quite a large scale adding heavy burden on foreign exchange out go and generation cost is linked with the fluctuations in the international oil prices. India is endowed with enormous economically exploitable and viable hydropower potential, assessed to be about 84,044 MW at 60% load factor (1,40,074 MW installed capacity). In addition, 6781.81 MW in terms of installed capacity from small, mini and micro hydropower schemes have been assessed. Also 56 sites for pumped storage schemes with an aggregate installed capacity of 94,000 MW have been identified [6]. Issues in power sector: Besides the continuous addition in the generation capacity and induction of various technologies for the development of the generation, transmission and distribution systems, and attention needs to be paid on the following issues, Fossil fuels are finite in nature. Exploitation of these resources has adverse effects on the ecology due to mining, deforestation, particulate matter emissions, handling of waste, transportation dependency etc. The rapid increase in the capacity of thermal power generation in India resulted in production of huge quantity of coal ash. Estimated production of coal ash including both fly ash and bottom-ash is likely to touch 90 million tones per annuam by 2000 AD. Thermal power generation through coal combustion produces minute particles of ash that causes serious environmental problems, commonly known as fly ash. These ash particles consist of silica, alumina, oxides of iron, calcium and magnesium and toxic heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cobalt and copper. Most of the utility thermal power stations in India use bituminous coal and produce large quantities of fly ash. This poses serious problems in the form of land use, health hazards and environmental danger. A coal movement is another serious issue, increasing burden on the transportation facilities and hence higher transportation costs. Moreover many thermal power plants installed in 1970s are growing old and are also not getting the required grade of coal, as a result the operating PLF of some of the plants has gone as low as, 11.4% in Bihar, 21.1% in Jharkhand and 14.8% in Assam [7]. The coal production has a steady growth and it reached to 292,2 million tons during 1995-96. Figures indicate the India’s coal reserve works out to be 160 billion tons and it will last for 530 years provided the coal consumption and population are properly controlled [3]. Most hydropower systems in use today are large-scale and are unfortunately hampered by many environmental problems [2,8] such as, building of large dams in order to create a reservoir, mass population migration, disruption of traditional fishing practices, deposition of silt in river and deteriorating water quality due to toxic elements, methane release. The conventional method of hydropower planning is beset with many impediments like difficult accessibility of the site, rough terrain in hilly areas etc. resulting into long gestation period extending to even 8 -10 years in some cases and cost escalation 5 - 6 times more than the original estimate [9]. Bulk of the hydro potential is in difficult/ inaccessible terrains in the North and Northeastern regions. Identification and assessment of water resources, frequent updating of the information and investigation and survey is difficult due to difficult and inaccessible terrain profile that becomes time consuming by conventional method. Moreover, the topological maps used for walkover survey and preliminary survey can be very old and recent changes in inhabitation pattern, vegetation coverage and water bodies etc. cannot be clearly located. In India, average transmission and distribution (T&D) losses, have been officially indicated as 23% of the electricity generated. However, as per sample studies carried out by independent agencies including TERI, these losses have been estimated to be as high as 50% in some states. The continued rising trend (15% in 1996-97 to 23% in 1998-99 and 21.2% in 2001-2002) in the T&D losses is a matter of serious concern. Moreover, inadequate Transmission & Distribution facilities are contributing to lowering the capacity addition on one-hand and power shortages at the other hand [10]. Substantial work has been done and achieved significant success on the Energy management issues: demand side management, load flow methods, use of energy efficient equipment, smoothening of load curves by diversion of peak load, improvement of plant load factor by proper instrumentation and control, reduction in the transmission and distribution losses, energy audits for the industrial sectors and energy conservation in domestic as well as industrial sectors etc. Meanwhile, capacity growth slipped from the target in almost all plan-periods. Capacity addition of 2858.10 MW is achieved against the target addition of 4109.10 MW in 2002-2003 and 3951.63 MW is achieved against the target addition of 5202.34 MW in 2003-2004 leading to the power deficits [1]. Decentralized energy technologies based on local sources can be vital alternative to many conventional sources of energy in diverse end uses in rural India. India has a good potential for developing non-conventional energy sources. A large number of models have been developed for various non conventional energy sources such as wind energy , solar photovoltaic energy, hybrid models, biomass etc. Amongst the various renewable energy sources, Small Hydropower is significant from the point of view of decentralized power generation and that too in hilly regions where the terrain is difficult for the promotion of other energy sources and up to which extension of grid system becomes uneconomical. Due emphasis needs to be paid for the development of small hydropower resources. Small hydropower: Amongst the renewable energy sources, small hydropower is one of the most attractive and probably the oldest environmentally began energy technology [11]. The small hydropower project can be developed economically by simple design of turbines, generators and civil works (Figure 2). Since the use of standardized power plants and local materials and labor are more applicable to small-scale sites, the net cost savings may be sufficient to justify a preference for small-scale development on both a national economic and regional economic basis [12]. Indigenous power plant industry now produces a full range of generating and transmission equipment and its share in new capacity additions has risen from 7.2% in 1969-70 to 79.4% in 1987-1988. The adoptability of technological innovations to suit the smaller versions and cost effective simplifications are being tried by many manufacturers. Successful efforts have been made to improve the efficiency of turbine, generator etc. Indian history in small hydro developments is a century old, first hydro project of 130 kW commissioned in the hills of Darjeeling in 1897 followed by Sivasamudram project of 4.5 MW in Mysore district of Karnataka. Estimated technical potential of small hydropower (Up to 25 MW) in India is about 15,000 MW out of which about 1509.0 MW has been achieved as on May 2003 [13]. Small hydropower development is one of the thrust areas of power generation from renewable resources in the Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources. Runoff generated from melting of snow and glaciers of Himalayan region form a source of numerous streams. Due to steep slopes, all such streams have potential sites for hydropower generation. If this potential is fully utilized, it will help in generating power from environmentally friendly Run-of-River hydropower stations [14]. Small hydropower potential can provide a solution for energy problems in remote and hilly areas where the extension of grid system is comparatively uneconomical.  Figure 1 : Development of Small Hydropower From the discussion it is apparent that in India, it is an opportune time that small hydropower should get a strategic thrust, as environment driven awareness has rediscovered ‘ small hydropower’ as a principle renewable sources for sustainable development. Ministry of Non conventional Energy Sources encourages the development of SHP by giving subsidy at various stages of project implementation [15]. Hydroelectric project needs to co-relate a large data from various sources; eg. Geology, population, and other project related information such as assured water availability, constructional details, hydropower power capacity, and financial aspects. With the availability of multi-sensor satellite data at very high spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions, it is now possible to prepare up-to-date and accurate land use/ land cover map and to extract latest information in less time, at lower cost and with better accuracy. The information from satellite data interpretation and other descriptive data can be merged into GIS, thus generating a unique database for hydropower project to accelerate the development. Geographical Information System: The technology of GIS provides a means of introducing information and knowledge from various data sources in to the decision-making process and help in handling and manipulating the classified remotely sensed data. Entire information is stored in the database in GIS environment as separate thematic layers and hence it becomes easy to handle the entire data [16]. Based on the application GIS can be developed by using basic components: data, technology, application and people, as represented in Figure 4.  Figure 1 : Key Components of GIS A GIS stores a representation of the world in the form of layers connected by a common geographical frame of reference. Each of the features required for hydropower projects, on a layer as shown in Figure 3, has a unique identifier, which distinguishes it from the rest of the features on the layer, and allow us to relate it to relevant information stored in external databases, etc and to capture only those elements of the world that are of interest to us, like catchment area, under forestation, covered under snow etc. GIS is also used to input, store, retrieve, manipulate, analyze and output geographically referenced data or geospatial data, in order to support decision making for planning and management of land use, natural resources, environment, transportation, urban facilities, and other administrative records. All infrastructure development for hydropower projects follows a set procedure of survey and investigation before taking up implementation. These steps involve, Pre-Feasibility Report, Feasibility Report, and Detailed Project Report. Since the balance potential hydropower sites in the country are of the order of 450 located in the river systems of Indus, Ganga, Brahmaputra rivers in central India, west flowing and east flowing rivers in Western Ghat and Eastern Ghat in southern India. In order to exploit the balance hydro-potential to the full extent, in a sustainable manner it is necessary to integrate the information on a common platform. In conventional project handling system, geospatial data are poorly maintained, maps and statistics are not updated, accurate data and information may not available, data retrieval and data sharing is not easy and sometimes not data available is not compatible for the application. Whereas, in GIS environment geospatial data are better maintained in a standard format, revision and updating are easier, geospatial data and information are easier to search, analyze and represent, geospatial data can be shared and exchanged freely, productivity of the staff is improved and more efficient, time and money are saved and better decisions can be made. Conclusion: Small hydropower projects are generally considered to be more environmentally favorable than both large hydro and fossil fuel powered plants, as these do not involve serious deforestation, rehabilitation and submergence. Small-scale hydropower is economically competitive with small-scale fossil fuel/ steam-electrical plants particularly if the hydro sites are located near electricity demand centers and are truly sustainable when they ‘internalize’ (or fully account for) their environmental and social costs. In India hydropower generation has been and will continue to be an integral part of the generation due to the abundance of rivers, mountains, and precipitation in the region. For meeting the requirements of demand and energy, hydropower offers major attractions and deserves to be given highest preference amongst the options available. Use of remote sensing data in GIS environment accelerates the development of cost effective and domain specific technique for small hydropower projects in India. References:
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