A decision support system to assist river basin hydroelectric inventory studies in Brazil

Abstract

The large hydroelectric potential of Brazilian river basins is being progressively exploited, and today, this type of electricity generation represents 86% of the Brazilian electric power matrix. The hydroelectric expansion planning in Brazil is done through a serie of studies and the Hydropower Inventory Studies is one of the earliest stages of this process. So, that is the moment when every option for the division of the water head in the river basins should be studied in order to select the one that gives the best energetic, economic, social and environmental balance, according to the Hydroelectric River Basin Inventory's Manual. To assist Hydroelectric Inventory Studies a computerized decision support system, called SINV, has been developed and it integrates data management with simulation/optimization and plotting tools to aid in energetic and socio-environmental comparisons of the different head division schemes considering a multi-objective criterion. This paper presents a river basin inventory study case using the SINV package. © 2009 WIT Press.