Non-Structural Risk Reduction of Regulating and Diversion Dams

One of the inherent advantages of hydropower is the ability to meet daily peaking power. In projects regulating dams would be used to regulate the power plants outflows multi-purpose for agricultural purposes. The reservoir volumes of regulating and diversions dams are normally much smaller than that of the main dam. So in practice in most cases the design floods of regulating dams are smaller than that of the main spillway. Still in some cases the incremental damages of regulating dams failures and spillway costs may be considerable. In practice for many hydropower projects, the free storage during the routing of safety check flood of the downstream regulating dam would be adequate for regulating the possible dambreak outflow from the downstream dams. As a result,the incremental consequences of the failure of regulating dams would be negligible and accordingly Economic Risk Analysis can be used for determination of the design flood for the spillways of many regulating and diversion dams. This strategy may be one of the few alternatives for coping with the most important challenges of the water engineers in Ï Î st century: Construction of Safer, economical and sustainable hydraulic structures.