New Software for the Techno-Economic Analysis of Small Hydro Power Plants

Project SMART (Strategies to Promote Small-Scale Hydro Electricity Production in Europe) from the Intelligent Energy Europe (IEE) program, in which 7 institutions from 5 European states participate, pointed to the important barriers for the expansion of small hydro power plants (SHP) in Europe. One of the main barriers is the lack of suitable methodology and software able to create a clear view of the SHP potential in the given territory, as well as a complete techno-economic analysis for certain locations. Worldwide, there are a certain number of software for this purpose, and will be presented in this paper. However, in practical application for concrete cases, they show certain disadvantages. For example, one software is not able to take into account all the specifics of watercourses and plants; another does not have the option of selecting all types of turbines; in others, the calculation models are based on a limited number of equations that do not describe all possible cases; in some, economic analysis is oversimplified, etc. The aim of this paper is to develop software that is more comprehensive than any existing software. A new software for the techno-economic analysis of SHP is developed using Python and will be presented in this paper. The software is very useful for experts in the field of SHP, but also much wider, for decision-makers, potential investors, and stakeholders, especially in developing countries. It will improve water resources management, disseminate opportunities to investors, and increase the interest of stakeholders to invest in SHP, resulting in their wider use. The software is tested on location for SHP in the Republic of Croatia by comparison with the results obtained by the usual classical calculation. The agreement of the results is satisfactory.