A global proliferation of large dam construction since the 1950s has been accompanied by scientific research challenging the benefit of these projects while drawing attention to their numerous negative environmental and social impacts. The institutions that assess the costs and benefits associated with large dam proposals, creating policies either approving, altering, or disapproving them, collectively form what is known as a policymaking framework. Examining these frameworks allows observers to trace policies through outlined decision-making processes and can help to reveal inherent biases within those systems that may impact policy outcomes. Often, divergent policy outcomes, like the those observed in the cases of the Belo Monte dam in Brazil and HidroAysén dam in Chile, are a result of variations in the environmental policymaking frameworks of the deviating cases. The subjects of this study present similar arrangements of costs and benefits but resulted incongruous policy outcomes, specifically that the HidroAysén dam was not built while the Belo Monte dam is currently under construction. Existing bodies of literature outlining the environmental policymaking frameworks of Chile and Brazil fail to fully address the influence of external variables, including presidential influence, corruption, and electoral politics, on these cases. This project synthesizes an outline of the environmental policymaking frameworks of Chile and Brazil from existing literature and uses the divergent cases of the Belo Monte and HidroAysén dams to provide evidence for the incorporation of these external variables to better understand the incongruous policy outcomes these frameworks produce.

No description available.

no abstract provided by author / Master of Science

Historical hydroelectric stations are part of an aging industrial heritage that is still extremely relevant today through its form of generating energy. Many stations built in the 20th c. are categorized as architectural heritage, therefore protected against demolition or radical change, thus also a radical expansion that would allow to modernize the station and allow for bigger energy output. Viskafors power station in Borås (Sweden) built in 1917 for the former local textile factory,  is a small-scale power station that is marked as architectural heritage, currently owned by Vattenfall.  The town of Viskafors is one of many factory towns along the river and as the industry went bankrupt in the 1970-ties it has become a suburb to the city of Borås. The only public buildings in Viskafors are schools. The town once defined by the industry is now left with an inaccessible waterfront and plenty of unused and unattainable space.The former factory grounds and the restricted area around the hydroelectric station, railway and regional road block the waterfront.The latest station renovation happened in 2013, leaving the second floor and the lift tower empty. Forming another void in the total space that Viskafors has to offer.Can this void be used as leverage to explore the potential of formerly unattainable space within the station and in connection to the waterfront? Keeping this in mind, this thesis aims to find meaningful ways to inhabit and repurpose formerly unattainable space as it is today; to find methods of organizing complex landscapes; initiate a discussion of new thinking of potential hybrid scenarios for the complexities of our future settlements.Can the future be a link to the past and vice versa?The project space stretches from the street level approaching the building to the rooftop, extends into the empty space of the station's second floor, and continues over the other side of the river. The existing second-floor space dimensions are  33 m x 11m x 5.5 m forming a box space. In theory, a box space this size holds infinite potential as long as it remains empty and has no walls, this project aims to explore the method of placing programmed pavilions/interventions as a space-organizing method of work and extending the approach to the rest of the project site area.The aim is to keep the hydroelectric station running while inhabiting the empty space surrounding it, and learning how to live with it.

Through integrated modeling of power system operations and market risks, this thesis addresses a variety of important issues on market signals modeling, generation capacity scheduling, and electricity forward trading. The first part of the thesis addresses a central problem of transmission investment which is to model market signals for transmission adequacy. The proposed system simulation framework, combined with the stochastic price model, provides a powerful tool for capturing the characteristics of market prices dynamics and evaluating transmission investment. We advocate the use of an AC power flow formulations instead since it allocates transmission losses correctly and reveals the economic incentives of voltage requirements. By incorporating reliability constraints in the market dispatch, the resulting market prices yield incentives for market participants to invest in additional transmission capacity. The second part of the thesis presents a co-optimization modeling framework that incorporates market participation and market price uncertainties into the capacity allocation decision-making problem through a stochastic programming formulation. Optimal scenario-dependent generation scheduling strategies are obtained. The third part of the thesis is devoted to analyzing the risk premium present in the electricity day-ahead forward price over the real-time spot price. This study establishes a quantitative model for incorporating transmission congestion into the analysis of electricity day-ahead forward risk premium. Evidences from empirical studies confirm the significant statistical relationship between the day-ahead forward risk premium and the shadow price premiums on transmission flowgates.

This thesis argues that economic development, in both theory and practice, is inevitably based on moral questions. These questions have been explored in recent years by "development ethicists," a multidisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners committed to evaluating the policy implications of economic development. Chapter 1 engages this body of literature, arguing that the capability ethic articulated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum can provide a valuable ethical framework for evaluating economic development in the Canadian north. Their approach is considered in conjunction with other ethical proposals, and, in particular, how theological insights provide an additional dimension for a more comprehensive development ethic. / Chapter 2 investigates the ethical assumptions in the theories and models of economic development proposed for the Canadian north, and how public policy based on these theories and models has infringed on the claims and aspirations of Aboriginal peoples. The chapter then shifts from the larger Canadian context to Manitoba, and explores the story of how two hydro development projects impacted several Aboriginal communities. / This story provides the context for understanding why four church denominations became involved in defending the rights and aims of five Aboriginal communities in northern Manitoba. Chapter 3 examines the moral vision of the four Christian churches and their rationale for sponsoring four days of public hearings on the Churchill-Nelson Rivers hydro diversion project. The public hearings provide an opportunity to analyse how development affects the lives of a people group when it is thrust upon them without consideration of their economic, cultural, and social value systems. / The final chapter examines the issue of the loss of cultural identity for Aboriginal communities as economic development occurs. A major issue pertaining to the loss of cultural identity is whether a development ethic should be based on a universal ethic, or on local traditions, for example, the traditions of the five Aboriginal communities in northern Manitoba. The efforts of the Interchurch Task Force are investigated as a particular type of response to these issues.

La presente tesis busca evaluar el potencial hidroeléctrico mediante el uso del Sistema de Información Geográfica y algoritmo en Matlab en el departamento de Amazonas, con el fin de estimar ubicaciones potenciales para el desarrollo de centrales hidroeléctricas de pasada. Para llevar a cabo esta investigación, se realiza el desarrollo de un modelo de elevación digital del área de estudio haciendo uso del software ArcGIS. EL modelo de elevación digital comprende: la sectorización del departamento de Amazonas en base a las cuencas que este presenta, la red hídrica del departamento, los centros poblados, áreas protegidas y sitios arqueológicos. Por otro lado, el algoritmo en Matlab facilita la ubicación de sitios potenciales, empleando una serie de códigos, los cuales trabajan con características geográficas establecidas para las posibles ubicaciones. Después de haber estimado las ubicaciones potenciales, se hace uso del modelo de balance hídrico, estimando los caudales medios anuales. En la presente tesis se estiman dichos caudales con un 85% de persistencia, para obtener un resultado que se asemeje a la realidad de la zona. Una vez estimados los caudales, se pasó a realizar las restricciones: políticas, demográficas, ambientales y económicas, con el fin de obtener las opciones con mayor viabilidad. Se obtuvieron 21 posibles ubicaciones, las cuales producen entre 3 a 10 MW aproximadamente de energía hidroeléctrica. De las 21 ubicaciones obtenidas se escogieron 5 localidades las cuales generan 103.89 GW.h al año. Energia que satisface el consumo de la población, sobrepasando la energía generada por las estaciones existentes. / Despite the fact that the department of Amazonas has one of the densest water networks, it is one of the departments with minimal hydroelectric energy production, demonstrating the lack of use of water resources. For this reason, an improvement is proposed in evaluation of the hydroelectric potential of department in order to increase the production of hydroelectric energy, and in turn reduce the production of thermal energy, avoiding gas emissions. The most important tool used in the optimization of evaluation is: the Geographic Information System and the Matlab coding. Similar to hydrometeorological information obtained from the PISCO product was used. The result of this study shows that with new evaluation of the hydroelectric potential it is possible to increase the production of hydroelectric energy and therefore satisfy the demand for hydroelectric energy of the population of Amazonas department. / Tesis

No description available.

This thesis employs twentieth-century hydroelectric development ventures in the Highlands of Scotland as a means of exploring conflicting demands of socio-economic development and landscape protection in cherished places. In Scotland, twentieth-century landscape protection ideals were founded upon a landscape aesthetic shaped by the principles and objectives of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romanticism. The concept that the ‘natural’ world somehow existed separately from the world of humans, as a potential refuge from a rapidly industrialising European society, meant that the Romantic landscape aesthetic left little or no room for the incorporation of visible elements of industrialisation. This aesthetic has seen only limited change over time. As a result, satisfactory compromises between land-use and landscape protection have seldom been reached: a situation thrown into sharp relief by efforts to develop Highland water systems for the generation of hydroelectric energy during the period 1919 to 1980. The debate over hydroelectric development in the Highlands is instructive for a number of reasons, not least its parallels with the current focus on the placement of wind turbines in significant landscapes. Thanks to the Romantic legacy, attempts to modify landscapes as valued as those of the Highlands are fraught with complexity, even when development is undertaken in the interests of socio-economic enhancement. The thesis outlines the progression of both sides of the argument, assesses the significance of the compromises attempted and evaluates the lessons learned from nearly six decades of policymaking initiatives in this sphere. Core aesthetic ideals broadened, but did not change. Landscape protection progressed on the basis of protectionists’ ability to adjust the focus of their opposition; increased articulation of the idea of the collective ownership of important landscapes superseded the need to confront the viability of entrenched aesthetic orthodoxies.

O planejamento de médio e longo prazo da operação hidrelétrica brasileira consiste em um problema de grande porte e que envolve muitas variáveis, onde, dentre estas, se destacam as vazões afluentes aos reservatórios. Estas vazões devem assim ser estimadas, com o objetivo de caracterizar a oferta futura de eletricidade em um horizonte de planejamento. Dentre as possíveis abordagens existentes para estimar estas vazões, se destaca a abordagem estocástica, que permite considerar variáveis em função de sua distribuição probabilística, e busca considerar o universo mais provável de manifestações. A abordagem estocástica pode se utilizar de modelos estocásticos, que costumam ser caracterizados através de árvores de cenários, que representam o universo de possibilidades de ocorrências. No entanto, devido à elevada dimensionalidade que o processo estocástico pode resultar ao se considerar árvores muito grandes, torna-se necessária a utilização de técnicas complementares, que visem a redução do número de cenários. Com base nesta contextualização, esta dissertação aborda de modo geral o processo de otimização estocástica do planejamento da geração hidrelétrica, considerando árvores de cenários e técnicas de redução de cenários, e utilizando como meio a modelagem de otimização da geração desenvolvida no SSD HIDROTERM, em linguagem GAMS. Como estudo de caso, foram desenvolvidos e adaptados algoritmos de otimização estocástica que consideram árvores com elevado número de cenários, gerados por meio de modelos estocásticos autorregressivos do tipo PAR e, sobre estas árvores, foi ainda aplicada a ferramenta de redução de cenários por agrupamento - SCENRED, desenvolvida em GAMS. As análises de sensibilidade realizadas visaram: validar o processo proposto de otimização estocástica; analisar os efeitos da utilização de diferentes árvores reduzidas de cenários de vazões, o impacto da consideração de diferentes horizontes de planejamento e a influência do regime hidrológico nos principais resultados do processo de otimização; além de estudar as vantagens e desvantagens deste processo para o planejamento da operação hidrelétrica. Os resultados indicam que o processo de otimização estocástica é eficaz ao considerar as aleatoriedades envolvidas na previsão de vazões afluentes. Estes também confirmaram tendências já esperadas no processo de otimização estocástica, como o fato de que quanto maior a árvore de cenários, mais precisos e estáveis tendem os resultados; assim como que quanto mais cenários envolvidos, maior o tempo de processamento requerido. Neste contexto, a utilização da ferramenta de redução SCENRED permitiu reduções significativas no tamanho da árvore de cenários, sem, contudo, ocasionar em perdas na qualidade e estabilidade da solução, além de viabilizar a aplicação do algoritmo de otimização estocástica proposto. / The medium and long-term planning of the Brazilian electric system consists of a complex problem with many uncertainties and variables, where, among these the inflows to the reservoirs highlight. These inflows need to be estimated in order to characterize the future availability of electricity in a planning horizon. Among the existing approaches to estimate these inflows, highlights the stochastic approach, which consider these variables according to their probability distribution, and aims to consider the most likely universe of manifestations. The stochastic approach can be developed through stochastic models, which are often characterized by scenarios trees that represent the possible universe. However, due to the high dimensionality that stochastic analyses can result when considering very large trees, it becomes necessary to use complementary tools, aimed at reducing the number of scenarios. Based on this context, this dissertation discusses in general the process of stochastic optimization of the hydroelectric generation planning, considering scenarios trees and scenario reduction tools, through the optimization modeling developed in the DSS HIDROTERM, developed in GAMS language. As a case study, it was generated and adapted stochastic optimization algorithms that consider trees with large number of scenarios, generated by autoregressive stochastic models PAR. Based on these trees it was applied the scenario reduction tool SCENRED, developed in GAMS language. The sensitivity analyzes developed intended to: validate the stochastic optimization process; analyze the effects of using different reduced scenarios trees of inflows; analyze the impacts of considering different planning horizons, analyze the hydrological influence on the main results of the optimization process, and the benefits and disadvantages of this process in the hydroelectric operation planning. The results indicate that the stochastic optimization process is effective to consider the randomness involved in the prediction of inflow to the reservoirs. These results have also confirmed some well-known trends in the stochastic optimization process, such as the fact that the larger the tree scenarios, more accurate and stable tend the results but also greater the processing time required. In this context, the use of the reduction tool SCENRED allowed significant reductions in the size of scenarios tree, without causing losses in quality and solution stability, enabling the application of the stochastic optimization algorithm proposed.