TY - JOUR
T1 - Influence of El Niño Southern Oscillation on global hydropower production
AU - Ng, Jia Yi
AU - Turner, Sean W.D.
AU - Galelli, Stefano
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2017/3/2
Y1 - 2017/3/2
N2 - El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) strongly influences the global climate system, affecting hydrology in many of the world's river basins. This raises the prospect of ENSO-driven variability in global and regional hydroelectric power generation. Here we study these effects by generating time series of power production for 1593 hydropower dams, which collectively represent more than half of the world's existing installed hydropower capacity. The time series are generated by forcing a detailed dam model with monthly-resolution, 20th century inflows - the model includes plant specifications, storage dynamics and realistic operating schemes, and runs irrespectively of the dam construction year. More than one third of simulated dams exhibit statistically significant annual energy production anomalies in at least one of the two ENSO phases of El Niño and La Niña. For most dams, the variability of relative anomalies in power production tends to be less than that of the forcing inflows - a consequence of dam design specifications, namely maximum turbine release rate and reservoir storage, which allows inflows to accumulate for power generation in subsequent dry years. Production is affected most prominently in Northwest United States, South America, Central America, the Iberian Peninsula, Southeast Asia and Southeast Australia. When aggregated globally, positive and negative energy production anomalies effectively cancel each other out, resulting in a weak and statistically insignificant net global anomaly for both ENSO phases.
AB - El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) strongly influences the global climate system, affecting hydrology in many of the world's river basins. This raises the prospect of ENSO-driven variability in global and regional hydroelectric power generation. Here we study these effects by generating time series of power production for 1593 hydropower dams, which collectively represent more than half of the world's existing installed hydropower capacity. The time series are generated by forcing a detailed dam model with monthly-resolution, 20th century inflows - the model includes plant specifications, storage dynamics and realistic operating schemes, and runs irrespectively of the dam construction year. More than one third of simulated dams exhibit statistically significant annual energy production anomalies in at least one of the two ENSO phases of El Niño and La Niña. For most dams, the variability of relative anomalies in power production tends to be less than that of the forcing inflows - a consequence of dam design specifications, namely maximum turbine release rate and reservoir storage, which allows inflows to accumulate for power generation in subsequent dry years. Production is affected most prominently in Northwest United States, South America, Central America, the Iberian Peninsula, Southeast Asia and Southeast Australia. When aggregated globally, positive and negative energy production anomalies effectively cancel each other out, resulting in a weak and statistically insignificant net global anomaly for both ENSO phases.
KW - El Nino Southern Oscillation
KW - climate variability
KW - global scale
KW - hydropower
KW - water-energy nexus
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85015046422&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1748-9326/aa5ef8
DO - 10.1088/1748-9326/aa5ef8
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85015046422
SN - 1748-9318
VL - 12
JO - Environmental Research Letters
JF - Environmental Research Letters
IS - 3
M1 - 034010
ER -