For optimal hydro planning, early insight is essential to decision-making, particularly in the case of a low or high flow year. The Basin Monitor supplies utilities and asset operators with the crucial long-range forecasting information necessary to make financial and operational decisions as well as perform initial and ongoing planning for the hydropower season.
When you need to see the bigger picture, the Basin Monitor is the most comprehensive forecast available, providing a wealth of information on an entire river basin spanning numerous watersheds. By storing a wide selection of critical information in a single, web-based location, the Basin Monitor offers the user greater efficiency and convenience than publicly available data or any other existing forecast.
Relying on historic flow, either average annual flows or historic probability distributions, limits your perspective by ignoring critical information present in the current hydrologic state of the watershed and in the global climate system. These states can greatly influence the range of expected flow volumes in both the near future (weeks to months) and long-term (interannual). 3TIER's Basin Monitor incorporates real-time meteorological and climatological data and uses proven forecasting approaches, including a climate-conditioned Ensemble Streamflow Prediction (ESP) methodology, to significantly reduce uncertainty about the coming water year.
The Basin Monitor forecast gives users advanced warning of high flows or extreme dry-season conditions, which may affect reservoir refill timing and complicate water allocation decisions for off stream uses, such as agricultural irrigation. Shifts in streamflow can also disrupt power generation, but the Basin Monitor allows operators adequate time to bring alternative energy sources online. This forecast also allows power marketers to determine potential power surplus and deficit to secure long-term power sales and purchases, and financial analysts to prepare revenue forecasts for utilities. In addition, up-to-date assessments of snow, precipitation, and soil moisture conditions help users track the evolving hydrologic state within the basin as the water year progresses.
The Basin Monitor forecasting package can be implemented anywhere worldwide. 3TIER's first application of the Basin Monitor focuses on the vast Columbia River basin located in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. and in British Columbia, Canada. This region's hydro energy production has a major influence on energy prices. With timely and accurate forecasting, asset operators and energy traders in this region now have a critical competitive edge with advanced insight into forward market conditions. The Basin Monitor allows better prediction and calculation of supply curves as well as better timing and management of PPA's, EMA's, hedges, and energy trades. It helps users make informed decisions about using and purchasing reserve energy sources like natural gas. Overall, with the Basin Monitor, users can benefit from superior management and asset optimization across their entire portfolio.
3TIER's Basin Monitor forecast system employs a variation of the Ensemble Streamflow Prediction (ESP) method originally developed by the U.S. National Weather Service. ESP uses recently observed meteorology to estimate the snow and soil moisture conditions of a hydrologic model for the current date then uses the current conditions to initialize a set of hydrologic forecasts, called an ensemble, which is driven into the future using historically observed meteorological sequences.
At 3TIER, the meteorological forecast sequences are given different weights to reflect the probabilities of each historical sequence occurring, given current outlooks for ENSO climate states (ENSO is commonly described by its extreme states, El Niño, and La Niña). This technique has been widely shown to improve the skill of climate forecasts and derived streamflow predictions, particularly in the Pacific Northwest.
The hydrologic models used by 3TIER are physically based, fully distributed water and energy balance models developed at the University of Washington and Princeton University, with contributions from current 3TIER scientists. The Basin Monitor forecasts update twice weekly, although many of the associated data tools within the Basin Monitor update on a daily basis.
If you are unfamiliar with the technical terminology on this page, please visit our Glossary for more information.
