Prediction of the Discharge Flow in a Small Hydropower Station without Hydrological Data Based on SWAT Model

Abstract

The availability of hydrological data for small hydropower plants is an important prerequisite for reservoir scheduling, reservoir flood control and integrated water resources. To address the problem of a lack of hydrological data in small hydropower plants, this paper proposes a method to predict the power generation flow of small hydropower stations without hydrological data using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool model (SWAT) when the traditional data-driven methods cannot study the problem of power generation flow prediction in small hydropower stations well. The method can use gridded meteorological data as the input of the model to solve the problem of small hydropower stations without meteorological data. The problem that small hydropower plants without hydrological data cannot calibrate the hydrological model is solved by calculating the generation flow through the output of small hydropower station and by using the similarity analysis method to migrate the generation flow of similar small hydropower stations. The model was tested in a watershed in southwest China to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the coefficient of determination between the predicted and measured values of small hydropower stations without information is about 0.84, which achieves a better prediction.