ASSESSMENT OF HYDRO POTENTIAL USING INTEGRATED TOOL IN QGIS

Abstract. The necessity for developing Hydropower plants a renewable energy source has emerged due to increase in energy demand and environmental concern, as non-renewable sources produce greenhouse gasses. Location analysis methodology for hydropower development has formerly depended upon onsite surveys and manual work which are tedious, time consuming and costly as compared to the work done on GIS environment. In current study an attempt has been made to construct a tool that integrate and automate the various hydrology tools available in QGIS for finding hydro potential site. Each tool perform different function and are linked according to the workflow as majority of these tools uses the output of the previous tool and thus are interdependent. Geoprocessing analysis is performed on DEM to generate fill sink, flow direction, flow accumulation, identification of stream network, head (falling height). Hydrological data (runoff) and Pour point location is taken as input to generate discharge value and watershed contributing to that point location respectively. Finally hydro potential is calculated by the tool and sites having high potential are identified. The model is tested on Hasdo bango hydro power plant site located in Korba district of Chhattisgarh. The hydro potential of the site evaluated from the model is 112 MW which is close to the total installed capacity of the existing hydro power plant of 120 MW.