Capacity Planning of Decentralized Small-Scale Hydro Power Plants

Some simple and efficient models are proposed to determine the optimal capacity and the expected energy generation of a decentralized small-scale hydro plant. Both the supply of an isolated grid, possibly with complementary thermal generation, and the sale of surplus hydro power to an interconnected power grid are considered. The models take into account, in a probabilistic way, the outage rate of the generating units making up the small hydro plant. The number of these units and their start-up dates are obtained with the help of a forward dynamic programming algorithm. An example illustrates the procedure.