Assessments of available riverine hydrokinetic energy: a review

Abstract

Methods of estimating riverine hydrokinetic (HK) power for localized and regional studies are reviewed, evaluated, and compared. It was found that localized HK studies were not entirely consistent, with the most common discrepancies being discharge variability characterization, uncertainty analysis, and the amount of data used to derive the results. The issues associated with localized assessments were amplified for regional assessments. Regional HK assessments were less common, the methods were less consistent across studies, and the amount and type of data available varied widely across regions. New techniques and technologies, developed in Canada and globally, were evaluated for their usefulness to improve regional HK assessments. Emphasis was put on satellite remote sensing methods to estimate discharge and channel dimensions, as well as regionalized curve fitting to estimate channel roughness. The review of new techniques suggests that accuracy of the results is dependent on the amount and quality of the data available.