Assessment of Power Compeers Prospective of Gobecho Micro Hydropower Plant on Ganga River, Genale Dawa River Basin, Ethiopia

Abstract

Micro hydropower helps the rural areas to supply power with off grid electrification. This study deals with the design of micro hydropower scheme in Gobecho kebele, Genale Dawa river basin, Ethiopia. The site for the construction of diversion weir is located upstream of the Ganga river in the kebele. The design were implemented based on the available hydrological data collected from 1991 to 2020 river discharge at different stations by selecting the one, which is near to the Gobecho catchment. Ererti is a station geographically near to Gobecho catchment by using GIS 10.7 application. The Gobecho peak probable discharge of 3.503m 3 /s is computed using log normal distribution after L-moment analysis. Based on this peak discharge, vertical drop weir and components of headwork structure designed and provided relevant dimensions. The proposed vertical drop weir has a height of 0.703m, crest length 10m and the design flow for a hydropower scheme is 0.132m 3 /s estimated by FDC. The water passes through trapezoidal power canal of a 0.35m width and a 0.43 height to a forebay tank. A forebay of size 9 × 1.3 × 1.7 is provided at the end of the power canal. Moreover, the water leads from forebay to a 0.24m diameter of penstock running one unit turbine and capacity of 25kw. The selected type of turbine for proposed plant is cross flow turbine. Finally, the quantity of calculated estimate cost is 50,000 USD and the B/C ratio of 1.48 provided for this micro hydropower project.