French company creates ‘roadmap’ to improve quality of hydroelectric forecasts in Georgia

French state-owned company EDF has presented to the Georgian State Electrosystem (GSE) a hydro power ‘roadmap’ that analyses the potential of hydroelectricity power from 2020 to 2035, announces the Embassy of France to Georgia.

The aim of the roadmap is to verify the possibility of predicting hydrology in Georgia, using the Rioni River as a test case.

GSE will be able to improve the management of the energy balance and the optimal use of available water resources thanks to the project. 

The objective of this study is for Georgia to acquire the means to better develop forecasts of future hydro availability in Georgia, which can inform better programming of production and investment in this strategic sector", said Ambassador of France in Georgia Diego Colas.

The hydro management roadmap will define the priority list of actions to better evaluate expected river run-off and streamflow:

• Re-building a local hydrological measurement network
• Hydrological model simulations based on local and recent dataset
• Building a forecast center

The Embassy of France to Georgia says that the objective assessment of Georgia's hydrological potential will facilitate the complex use of water resources and will have a positive impact on the country's economic development.

“Predicting hydrology will enable hydropower plants in Georgia to carry out safe management of reservoirs, to use cascading effectively, to determine the optimisation of water resources and energy, energy surplus and shortage”, says the embassy.