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Impacts of upstream water abstraction and climate variability on River Mpanga hydropower production in Uganda

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Abstract

We investigated impacts of water abstraction and climate variability on Mpanga hydropower. Flow exceedance probabilities over hydrologically wet and dry conditions were compared. Hydropower productions with and without water abstraction were compared. Capacity of the hydropower plant on River Mpanga is 18 Megawatts which can be produced with the river flow of 16 m3/s. The differences in means of daily flows over the periods 2000–2013 and 2014–2020 considering exceedance probability selected in the range 20–50% were found to be significant (p < 0.05) based on Student t tests. Thus, the study area has been hydrologically wetter recently (2014–2020) than it was over the sub-period 2000–2013. The mean of days with flows ≥ 16 m3/s in each year over the period 2014–2020 was nearly 100 days and this was equivalent to hydropower of about 1800 Megawatts. The number of days in each year with flows ≥ 16 m3/s was on average far less over the period 2000–2013 than that from 2014 to 2020. The annual mean of hydropower from daily flows ≥ 16 m3/s during dry (such as 2000–2013) period can be about 10% of the values averaged over years with wet condition (e.g., period 2014–2020). Interannual climate variability can annually cause gain or loss of up to 16% hydropower compared with that from a year with “regular” seasons. Hydropower lost during dry (wet) season due to water abstraction was over the range 4–7% (0.4–1.6%) compared with the actual amount. These results are vital for adaptive planning of hydropower production amidst impacts of climate variability and human activities on hydrology.

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Availability of data and materials

The PET data used in this study were obtained from the Climatic Research Unit. The link where to download the PET data was provided within the paper.

Code availability

The code used in this study can be obtained from the main author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge that the PET data sets were of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Time-Series (TS) version 4.0 covering the period 1901–2019 (Harris et al., 2020) downloaded via https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/hrg/ (accessed: 24th November 2020).

Funding

This research study was financially supported by the Africa EMS Mpanga Limited (AEML).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Kyambogo University, Kyambogo, P.O. Box 1, Kampala, Uganda

    C. Onyutha

  2. Directorate of Water Resources Management, Albert Water Management Zone, Ministry of Water and Environment, P.O. Box 20026, Kampala, Uganda

    P. A. Kerudong & B. E. Guma

  3. Africa EMS Mpanga Ltd, P.O. Box 767, Kampala, Uganda

    C. Mugisha

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  1. C. Onyutha
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  2. P. A. Kerudong
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All authors were involved in the conception of the study, data acquisition, processing, and interpretation. C.O. was further involved in drafting the manuscript and making necessary revision. All authors reviewed and approved the manuscript for submission.

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Correspondence to C. Onyutha.

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Onyutha, C., Kerudong, P.A., Guma, B.E. et al. Impacts of upstream water abstraction and climate variability on River Mpanga hydropower production in Uganda. Int J Energ Water Res 6, 49–66 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42108-021-00137-1

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