Impact of GERD on Performance of High Aswan Dam

Khanal, Prajwal
January 2021

1 Introduction
• Nile is an international River flowing in Northeastern Africa, shared by 11 countries.
• Nile has two major tributaries: White Nile flowing through Great Lake region to Sudan and Blue Nile
from Ethiopian Highlands. These two rivers meet near Khartoum.
• Longest river with total length of 6853 km. Average annual flow averaged over 1990 to 1954 is 84 billion
cubic meters at Aswan Dam.

1.1 Aswan Dam

• Rockfill Dam completed in 1968, located at 17 km south of Aswan City
• Length: 3600 m, height 111 m above river bed, width 40 m at the crest and 980 m at the base.
• Hydropower Capacity 109KWh/year, 2100 MW

1.2 Aswan High Dam Reservoir

• Considered one of the most important water system component in Egypt
• Considered main source of freshwater for about 85 % of the population.
• Reservoir extends 500 km along the Nile River from the southern part of Egypt to the northern part of
Sudan, covering area of 6000 sq.km of which two thirds lies in Egypt: Lake Nasser and one-third in Sudan
called: Lake Nubia.

Characteristics Values
Max length(m) 500
Max width(km) 12
Maximum depth(m) 110
Mean depth(m) 70
Water Volume (BCM) 162
Average annual inflow (BCM) 70
Major water uses Irrigation, Hydropower

Table 1: Characteristics of AHDR

• Design Storage Capacity: 162 BCM

• Dead Storage Capacity: 31.6 BCM between levels of 85 m and 147 m
• Live storage Capacity: 90.7 BCM between 147 and 175 m
• Flood Control Storage: between 175m and 182m

1.3 GERD
• Project located approx 500 km NW of the Addis Ababa.
• 1780 m long, 155 m high dam.
• expected to generate 6000 MW of electricity
• NWL: 640 masl, MOL: 622 masl, during impounding varies from 560 to 640 masl [5]

1
2 Stochastic Approach
2.1 Backgroud Information
[5] evaluated the impact of GERD on ASWAN dam considering the six year filling period from 2014 to 2019,
for which the flow data of the year 1973 to 1979 was fed as an input to the model, considering this six year time
series equal to the mean of naturalised flow at HAD. The result interpreted that the there will be only 12%
and 7% reduction in annual energy of HAD due to GERD during and after filling phase respectively. Also, the
overall reliability level remains at 96%.
Ns
Rt = , 0 < Rt < 1 (1)
N
• Rt is time based reliability.
• Ns is number of interval the target demand is fully met.
• N is the total number of intervals covering the simulation analysis.
[4]evaluated the potential long term impact of the GERD on the downstream HAD using the MODSIM RIver
Basin Managament System for which the input of monthly mean of time series of data from 1956 to 2003 at
different stations were used. It was concluded that the production of energy in HAD would decrease by 5.243%
and reservoir level would not be much affected.

The critics of these methods are that the output of the model are highly depended on the input data used
in the model. Also, due to the stochastic nature of river flow, such deterministic value would not fully capture
all the possibilities of impact that GERD would have on the performance of Aswan Dam. For eg: The Nile
faced the drought period in 1980s and using the same series of data would not fully consider the probability of
extreme impacts of higher return period than the drought of 1980s.

[2] considered the stochastic process of the Nile flows and generated the 1000 possible flow scenarios that
may occur in Nile using Fractional Gaussian Noise (FGN) while preserving the Hurst Phenomenon, with Hurst
exponent h =0.72.

Hurst Phenomenon, also called long term persistence is the measure of long term memory of the time series.[1]
The Hurst exponent is calculated as [1]:
 
R(n)
E = Cnh as n → ∞ (2)
S(n)

• R(n) is the range of first cumulative deviations from the mean.

• S(n) is the sum of first n standard deviations.
• E[x] is the expected value.
• n is the total time span.
• C is a constant.
Interpretation
A value of h in the range of 0.5-1 indicates a time series with long term positive auto correlation, which means
a high value in the series would be followed by another high value and future will also tend to be high, while
the value in the range 0-0.5 indicates the long term switching in between high and low flows.

[3] calculated that to overcome the deficit of n-year return period, storage sizing proportional to nh is nec-
essary and For Nile, h = 0.72.

2.2 Generation of Synthetic Flow Data

• Historical Nile flow series obtained from Nile Water Sector of Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation
covering from 1911/12 to 2010/11.
• Flow at AHD is numerically divided into two parts, one from Blue Nile through GERD and other through
White Nile at Mogren, Rahad and Dinder and Atbara at Khasm El-Girba.

2
 • Annual flow series through GERD had an mean of 48.90 BCM and standard deviation of 8.73 BCM while
of all other sources after subtracting the Sudan abstraction, mean was 22.84 BCM and standard deviation
6.35 BCM.
• These two series have correlation coefficient of 0.72.

• Channel losses accounted to 5% of the flow.

• Stochastic AHD inflow time series obtained by generating two correlated FGN series of 1000 equally
probable realisations of input series, each of span of 100 years.
• Scenario without GERD is represented as sum of these two series after subtracting the losses.

• Scenario with GERD is represented through the remaining water after GERD requirement plus the dis-
charge from the other sources.
• No other additional losses from the regulation of GERD were considered. Due to regulation of GERD, less
sediment would be deposited at the Sudan side just of AHD, this may cause the increased evepaoration
on the Sudan side.
• It is considered that Sudan reservoir regulation would not have additional impact on generated river series
as they are annual storage reservoir.
• For monthly series to be used in simulation, GERD inflow series was dis aggregated based on average Blue
Nile flood hydro graph.

2.2.1 Water Users Data

• 1959 agreement for water allocation between the Sudan and Egypt allows 55.5 BCM/year of water for
Egyptian Infrastructure directly from release of HAD, 18.5 BCM/year for Sudanese use. The Sudanese
use is tapped at two points. 9.33 BCM/year deducted on Blue Nile river, 9.17 BCM/year on intemediary
catchment on White Nile and Atbara River and additional 10 BCM/year for seepage and evaporation loss.
No environmental flow considered.

2.3 Flow Simulation Model

Consists of two components:
GERD

• Max volume 74 BCM at maximum level of 640 m with reservoir area 1904 sq.km.
• Dead storage is 14.8 BCM at elevation of 590 m.
• Annual rate of evaporation is 1078 mm/y.(literature)
• Initial infiltration and deep percolation assumed for 20% of the GERD storage volume for the first im-
poundment.
• Two conceptual types of flow regulation considered.
• First is annual regulation to maximize the hydro power generation. All flow assumed for the regulation,
ETR. In this case, reservoir filled initially to 50 BCM within 5 years which enables reaching at full capacity
by sixth year of operation as announced by Eithiopia.
• Second is operating GERD as a long term storage reservoir which releases constant annual flow equal to
the long term average of the GERD minus evaporation loss, LTR. In this case, GERD filling beyond dead
storage 14.8 BCM would occur only using excess flow above long term average, with possibility of drawing
the GERD down to the dead storage level to compensate reduced inflow.

AHD
• Dead storage aorund 31 BCM at 147m. Full supply level is 175m at live storage of 90 BCM. So, total
storage is 121 BCM. At 178 m, water is spilled through spillway and at 182 m, emergency spillway opened.
• Evaporation rate assumed 2701 mm/y from literature.

• Operation of AHD is based on fixed monthly releases with total annual demand of 55.5 BCM.

3
 • In drought period, reduction of 5% applied if AHD contents below 60 BCM, 10% below if 55 BCM and
15% if 50 BCM. (Sliding Scale)
• No water abstracted below dead storage level of 147 m.
• Hydropower shutdown at 159m.

2.4 Assessment Impact

The addition of GERD would impact the AHD on three ways:
• Abstraction due to first impoundment
• Additional evaporation loss
• Flow regulation
The impact is studied at three level:
• Short term impact through the first impoundment of GERD, first 6 years.
• Medium term impact of 10 year period after the first impoundment.
• Long term impact for period of 30 years, assumed to start 70 years after the first impoundment. To ensure
the impact of first impoundment has been subsidized.
• For all simulations, AHD will be set at 175m.

2.5 Indicators
• Total deficit in AHD downstream release.
• Maximum deficit in AHD release in 1 year.
• Number of years where AHD deficit takes place.
• Average annual hydropower energy from AHD complex.
• Number of years of AHD hydropower shutdown.
• Average annual AHD evaporation
Calculation of events with different exceedance probabilities is done. 10% and 5% critical values are taken as
representative along with mean wherever possible.
• 10% critical means the value which has 10% probability of being worse than that.
• For considering the power generation, it means lower 10th percentile,while for deficit it means upper 90th
percentile.

3 Result
Short Term

References
[1] Wikipedia Contributors. Hurst Exponent, 2007 (accessed January 1, 2021).
[2] Khaled H Hamed. Stochastic Investigation of the GERD-AHD Interaction Through First Impoundment and
Beyond, pages 95–117. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2019.
[3] Hurst H.E. Long-term storage capacity of reservoirs. Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers,
116:770–799, 01 1951.
[4] Abebe Ephrem Kidus. Long-term potential impact of great ethiopian renaissance dam (gerd) on the down-
stream eastern nile high aswan dam (had). Sustainable Water Resources Management, 05:1973–1980, 12
2019.
[5] Asegdew Mulat and Semu Moges. Assessment of the impact of the grand ethiopian renaissance dam on the
performance of the high aswan dam. Journal of Water Resource and Protection, 06:583–598, 01 2014.

4
 Indicator Regulation Expected Value Critical 10% Critical 5%
No GERD 0.4 0.0 1.5
Total Deficit(BCM) ETR 7.5 23.7 35.6
LTR 2.0 6.6 13.3
No GERD 0.3 0.0 1.1
Maximum Deficit(BCM) ETR 3.9 11.1 19.1
LTR 1.0 4.1 6.9
No GERD 11.2 10.4 9.7
Annual AHD Energy (TWh/year) ETR 9.3 6.5 5.7
LTR 10.1 8.2 7.1
No GERD 0.6 0.0 3.0
AHD Energy Shutdown (months) ETR 9.7 31.0 38.0
LTR 3.2 13.0 23.5

Table 2: Short Term Impact: Indicators