Preliminary Site Selection of Pumped Storage Hydropower Plants - A GIS-based approach

The first stage in development and design of pumped storage hydropower plants (pshp) is finding theoptimum location. this paper presents a methodology for preliminary site selection of pshp with the help ofgeospatial data analysis in a geographic information system (gis) environment. the conventional methodof pshp site selection has certain limitations and is not cost and time effective. the volume of data and thecriteria for the site selection of pshp causes a lot of difficulties for decision making. however, with thehelp of gis as an information technology and with its analytical ability for decision making optimization, wecan overcome these difficulties. every criterion in a gis can be illustrated as a separate data layer and siteselection can be done according to the defined criteria. overlay is one of the spatial functions that cancombine spatial data layers from different sources for the site selection applications. in the process of siteselection of suitable pshp, various factors with different importance are considered.the zayanderudpumped storage hydropower has been investigated as a case study. suitable sites were identified based onspatial analysis in gis environment. the zayanderud pshp is located in a dry and hot zone in central iranand uses the existing zayanderud dam lake as the lower reservoir. during this study, sites for upper reservoirlocation have been defined according to the artificial upper reservoir on the bank of the zayanderudreservoir. in this case study, at first, effective criteria for pshp site location and corresponsive data layershave been defined. then, data layers have been classified and prepared with respect to main criteria. finally,results of overlay have been evaluated. the main factors used in pshp site selection process were;development pattern (using existing lake, rivers, sea, natural and artificial pools, etc. as upper or lowerreservoirs), head, conveyance length-head ratio, slope, power grid situation, roads accessibility, geology andother technical points of view. the above mentioned factors were entered in gis as data layers. results ofthis investigation indicate that by using gis, more suitable sites can be selected and verified and thefeasibility study process can be done in more precise manner. this method can save more time and costcompared to the conventional approach.