Climate Change Impacts on Hydropower Management

Climate change affects hydropower production by modifying total annual inflow volumes and their seasonal distribution. Moreover, increasing air temperatures impact electricity consumption and, as a consequence, electricity prices. All together, these phenomena may lead to a loss in revenue. We show that an adequate management of hydropower plants mitigates these losses. These results are obtained by resorting to an interdisciplinary approach integrating hydrology, economy and hydropower management in an interdependent quantitative model.