This is the fourth in a series of posts about how system-scale perspectives are vital to the planning and development of sustainable power systems, including hydropower.focused on how system-scale planning of power systems, and of hydropower within those systems, can achieve better outcomes for communities and river ecosystems.
We noted that this analysis of hydropower site selection was purely an illustrative exploration of the hypothesis that system-scale processes have the potential to deliver benefits to developers and investors, alongside improved outcomes for social and environmental resources, and that the results were not intended as a recommendation or plan for the Magdalena basin.
To test the hypothesis of improved project-scale financial performance, we used a hydropower site-selection model to choose from among 97 potential new hydropower dams in the Magdalena, comparing two scenarios.Net Present Value assessments, selecting the project with the highest NPV at each step .approach selected projects based on financial criteria that incorporated system-scale efficiencies.