The Energy Flexibility-Environment Tradeoff Toolset is designed to enable users to evaluate the effects of various operational flexibility specifications on hydropower and environmental outcomes. This toolset comprises a set of interconnected tools within an overarching framework. Users can choose one or more tools tailored to their specific requirements, rendering this toolset adaptable and versatile for a wide range of users and applications:
1. The Evaluation Tool consists of a collection of independent tools focused on assessing diverse metrics related to hydropower and environmental outcomes under user-defined policy scenarios. These scenarios and the resulting simulation data can be generated through external processes or based on the Policy Simulation Tool.
2. Many hydropower operators may lack accessible tools to simulate comprehensive policies for a given set of inflow/demand inputs, which are necessary for evaluating trade-offs. The Policy Simulation Tool addresses this gap by providing a means to simulate reservoir operations based on predefined policy parameters.
3. The universe of potential policy levers and their associated environmental and grid outcomes is vast. Typically, only a limited number of policy scenarios are explored during hydropower environmental reviews due to the complexity of setting up scenarios and the time required for execution. The Decision Space Exploration Tool (DSET) overcomes this challenge by employing proxy relationships based on outputs from detailed modeling and other methodologies. It swiftly explores thousands to millions of operational policy variations, identifying scenarios that strike a balance between environmental and grid considerations. Proxy relationships are simplified functions that relate reservoir outputs to key output metrics (e.g., the correlation between flow rate and downstream habitat availability). The development of a Proxy Relationship Builder Tool and a Proxy Relationship Guidance Document is underway to generate these proxy relationships used as inputs for the DSET.