Potential for Small Hydropower Plants Recognised

As in Switzerland there are several mountain-like waterflows, there is potential for more of these kind of devices. It is however quite diffiult to establish potential locations for these plants. Netwerk Wasser im Berggebiet has awarded the Swiss Mountain Water Award to WaterGISweb for the project GIS-supported Identification of potential locations for small Hydropower plants. The concept has been developed in cooperation with Sol-E Suisse whom also gave the order for a prototype.

The award money will be dedicated to develop a widely accessible online instrument that facilitates identification of locations, making use of a GIS sytem. Depending on several geographical characteristics like the waterflow, topography and environmental considerations or touristical destinations the computer can calculate optimal places for powerplants with performance classes to be defined. They can be projected in Google Earth and for every location, a fact sheet of main information can be made available. In this way, the starting phase that is in fact labour intensive, can be automated importantly. For some areas, WaterGisWeb already has a prototype and a first trial with locations in the field with Sol-E Suisse shows that the system is already functioning very well.