Morphological and Morphometric Assessment of Bosso, Chanchaga and Tagwai Dams in Niger State of Nigeria for Hydropower Electric Applications

Abstract

The morphological and morphometric assessment of Bosso, Chanchaga and Tagwai dams was carried out between 16th of November 2023 and 31st December 2023, to determine their suitability for hydropower electric generation. The morphological and morphometric primary data were collected from the dam sites through direct observations of the morphological characteristics of the dams and morphometric measurements of the width of the dams using tape rule in order to calculate their volumes and storage capacities, since they are relatively small dams with pre-existing structures that facilitated the measurements. The result shows that Bosso dam is a storage, lake, upstream and valley dam with height of 17 m, length of 132 m, width of 110 m, volume of 246,800.0 m3 and storage capacity of 41,466.7 m3 with the dam capable of supplying water to drive extremely minimum flow turbine of 0. 27 m3/s for 157,577.77 seconds, 2.559.63 minutes, 42.66 hours and 1.78 days assuming there is no further inflow of water into the dam and no water is lost from the dam. Tagwai dam is storage, plain and lake dam with height of 25 m, length of 1,770 m, width of 98.5 m, volume of 4,458,625.0 m3 and capacity of 726,437.5 m3. Chanchaga dam is a storage, downstream, lake and valley dam with height of 33.0 m, length of 2,400 m, width of 65 m, volume of 5,148,000.0 m3 and capacity of 858,000.0 m3. The assessment of the dam proves that they are suitable for hydroelectric power applications.