Turbine design for twenty-first century hydropower systems

Hydropower plants are deployed in a world characterized by a changing hydro-climate and unpredictable socio-economic factors. Traditional design approaches, which rely on cost-benefit analysis using historical hydro-climatic conditions while neglecting operational considerations, lack robustness in adapting to changes. Furthermore, optimizing and analysing the robustness of these systems typically demands substantial computing time and resources, necessitating high-performance computing.

Veysel's project disrupts conventional hydropower design methods by introducing a pioneering framework that addresses these shortcomings. Leveraging and extending HYPER, a state-of-the-art toolbox that computes technical performance, energy production, maintenance and operational costs of a design, this framework integrates many-objective robust decision making (MORDM) to define robust alternatives. Veysel's research also introduces a novel method involving strategic data input reduction, resulting in a substantial reduction in processing time while preserving nearly identical outcomes.