An investigation of small hydropower potential of Porsuk basin

Energy is important for Turkey. Turkey has rich renewable energy resources. The richest potential among the renewable resources belongs to water resources. More than 700 dams have been built, for the development of the country, since the establishment of the Turkish Republic. The priority has been given to the construction of large hydropower plants in order to accelerate the country's development and to provide the maximum benefit in the shortest time. Small hydropower plants were neglected since they were not seen profitable at that time. In this thesis, in order to close the exiting energy gap and to use the country's water resources efficiently, the small hydropower potential of the Porsuk Basin is investigated. For this purpose, Porsuk Basin is selected as the research area. In the thesis, the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software ArcGIS 10 was used for the spatial analysis of the Porsuk Basin. 290 map sections of 1/25,000 scale raster and vector maps covering the Porsuk Basin were obtained from the Turkish Army of General Command of Mapping in the UTM 36 zone and European Datum 1950 (ED50) coordinate system.ArcGIS software, was used for obtaining the sub-basins of the Porsuk Basin. Also, using the above-mentioned software, the border of the Porsuk Basin were obtained. The precipitation, temperature and evaporation distributions in the whole Porsuk Basin was calculated with the inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) Interpolation Method. The annual average precipitation of Porsuk Basin is 451 mm. According to this, the total annual average water potential of the Porsuk Basin is 11113,66x106 m² x 0,451 m=5,01x109 m3. This shows that there is not sufficient hydropower potential for the utilization of the installed large hydropower plants. But it is suitable for the installment of small hydropower plants.The average annual temperature of the basin is 11 oC (min. -32,20 oC, max. 42,20 oC) and the annual evaporation amount is 152 mm (min. 105 mm, max. 227 mm). To generate hydroelectric energy potential of the Porsuk Creek, a new dam on a suitable places, was designed. According to these evaluations, 1 dam has been planned on the Porsuk Creek. Then the amount and the economy of the hydroelectric energy of this dam was calculated. The costs of this 1 planned dam and its' amount of annual hydroelectrik energy was calculated by using Simahpp software. The total costs and the benefits of this dam were determined at the same program. According to the Simahpp program, the total cost and benefit of the dam were found as 4,06x106 US$ and 0,47x106 US$/year, respectively. In this thesis the planned dam, concrete dam is recommended as the dam type.