Modeling Shared Water Rights in Reservoir Systems

 Posted by Jason Lillywhite

Managing water in the Western United States is a complex challenge, especially in shared reservoir systems governed by the "prior appropriation" doctrine. This legal framework determines who gets water, and when, based on their legal rights and the ever-changing natural water supply. Dynamic simulation is a tool that enables you to better understand this type of system and visualize its behavior, leading to clearer insights and more reliable predictions.

This guide outlines a methodology for simulating shared water rights within a reservoir using dynamic simulation, applicable to various modeling environments. While the concepts are demonstrated using an example model built in GoldSim (with full details and the model available here), the principles are broadly transferable to other platforms, such as Python.

Simulating Controlled and Uncontrolled Reservoir Discharges

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

When simulating ponds and reservoirs in GoldSim, one of the most common types of systems we see are the combination of controlled and uncontrolled discharges. Examples of uncontrolled discharges include evaporation losses and flood flows over a spillway. Examples of controlled discharges include water that is pumped out or flows through an opening in the outlet works. Controlled outflows deliver water to service necessary uses downstream such as irrigation or industrial water demands.

In this blog post, I will walk through the process of setting up this type of model in GoldSim. Hopefully this will provide a good resource for those of you working on conceptual water balance models for your projects.

Run-of-the-River Hydroelectric Power Generation

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

A new model was added to our library that simulates run-of-the-river hydroelectric power generation. This model simulates a dam that is operated at a constant water level with insignificant amount of storage compared to the daily flow through. It is based on work by one of our expert modelers for a project on the Aksu River, located in northeastern Turkey. Below is a picture showing the dam that this model was originally created for.

Simulating Mixed-Media Storage

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

I created a model for demonstrating how to simulate mixed-media storage that accounts for changing quantities of solids and water over time. This kind of model is useful in mine water management models (tailings facilities) and also for simulating sediment accumulation in reservoirs. GoldSim makes it easy to account for the changes in the media while also managing overflows and operations of inflows in a way that is easy to use and understand.  

Building Blocks in GoldSim

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

One of the many strengths of GoldSim is its graphically enhanced user interface, which allows you to quickly build your model from reusable components. During a recent webinar, I built a reservoir operations model that receives water from a snowmelt driven watershed using 6 existing models found in our Model Library. Once I understood what my modeling requirements were, I was able to quickly compile a probabilistic system model that is powerful in demonstrating how to operate a dam that services changing water demands and climate scenarios, which protects against downstream flooding.

GoldSim 12 Preview (Part IV): The Pool Element

Posted by Rick Kossik

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts in which I briefly introduce many of the exciting new features that will appear in GoldSim 12 (the previous post can be found here). We plan to release GoldSim 12 in February 2017. Today's blog post focuses on a powerful new stock element: the Pool. A Pool is an expanded (and more powerful) version of the Reservoir element. It can do everything that a Reservoir can do, but has additional features to make it easier to manage multiple outflows (and inflows). As a result of these features, if you are modeling a system that has multiple distinct outflows, you should use a Pool rather than a Reservoir. In fact, we expect the Pool to replace the Reservoir for many types of applications (e.g., water management models).

Annual Recurrence Interval of Reservoir Spills

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

Models are built to better inform decisions. Unfortunately, the numerous disparate outputs of statistical models are often difficult to make sense of for the decision makers and/or stakeholders. Compiling the risk of specific events potentially occurring in the future into a single variable can considerably assist the decision makers into comparing the various trade-offs between different scenarios.

One of our long-time GoldSim users, Simon Chambert of Macroscopia submitted a model to our Model Library that is helpful for those looking for the recurrence interval of an event like a pond overflowing. Both the recurrence interval and exceedence probability are computed and displayed for a given set of input parameters that describe the pond design and constraints. This example can be used for other models that need to compute an annual recurrence interval.

Stakeholder Involvement for Environmental Flow Alternatives

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

Sometimes it is a challenge to involve a diverse audience in the modeling process of a complex system. It is important that you adequately reflect the complexities of the system while at the same time present the results clearly and concisely for people that have different perspectives. Recently, Ryan Morrison (USGS) and Mark Stone (Assistant professor at UNM) were able to leverage the visual and dynamic strengths of GoldSim to successfully involve a diverse group of stakeholders in evaluating flow alternatives for the Rio Chama basin, New Mexico. I wanted to highlight this modeling application because of its unique approach within the world of dynamic simulation and to demonstrate the utility of GoldSim's new scenario management capability.