Monitoring precipitation on mountain streams to optimize the hydroelectric power production

In order to optimize the hydroelectric energy production in small valleys, it is necessary to forecast, at least within a short interval (now-casting), the water flow in natural mountain streams where the hydroelectric power plants are located. To this purpose, it is necessary to measure the precipitations in small basins in a complex orography environment: an unrealistic high density rain-gauge network should be required if one should rely just on rain gauges. Lately the Department of Electronics and Telecommunication of Politecnico di Torino developed a low-cost X-band mini weather radar fully devoted to rain measurements, with high space and time resolution, not requiring complex installation, and maintenance free. These special “sensors”, together with already developed specific algorithms and applications, reaching very good results both in QPE and in monitoring techniques, are suitable to be employed in alpine regions within narrow valleys (an experimental installation is now active in the Aosta Valley, Italy). A detailed presentation of the radar, together with its maps having a post processing spatial resolution of 60 m2 and a temporal resolution of 1 minute, is reported: its adoption is proposed as a possible solution to keep under control the water flow of the streams in relation to rainfall and, consequently, to give a now-cast of the amount of hydroelectric power to be produced.