Simulation of Hirakud Reservoir to Study Conservation of Water

Abstract

With climate changing so rapidly and weather being completely unpredictable nowadays, it has been a cause of concern to predict rainfall. In a country like India the rainfall being completely seasonal and the amount of rainfall being so less, it has been a tough task for engineers to find out innovative ways to keep water in abundance till the rain arrives. If the engineers were taking initiatives for preserving water for future use, a heavy constant rainfall for days may cause flood in the nearby areas. So an assessment became necessary to carry out observations using the previously recorded data of flow of water in a river so that they can predict amount of water to be present in a reservoir monthly so that water can be supplied for all demands including high priority demand, low priority demand and maintain a downstream flow. So experimental models were made and observed which lead to results of different levels of water in different months so that water supply made is enough to meet the requirements. Further, these models were used to predict water requirements for Irrigation and Hydropower so that failure of crops and power scarcity can be eradicated to some extent. Thus these small models or simulation operation on reservoirs have completely revolutionized the world with its effective results by successfully helping in predicting the water requirement and availability so that further initiatives can be taken to have a supply of water in downstream as well as for high priority demands throughout the year. In this thesis a similar study is done by me by collecting all data for 5 years and making an experimental model using the newly developed software, NIH-ReSyP, by National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee to know the effective nature of experimental model of the reservoir.