Riverine Hydrokinetic Energy Potential in Selected Rivers In North Central, Nigeria

This work technically assesses Nigeria’s hydrokinetic energy potential with the view to developing anindigenous technology, based on the peculiar hydrology of Nigerian rivers, as a national renewableenergy resource. The research team focused on the main rivers in the southern River Niger basin in theNorth-central region of Nigeria for a start. The methodology was to first obtain the aggregate theoreticalhydrokinetic power available in the rivers and then determine the recoverable (technically obtainable)resource. The first involves using a hydrological model and spatial tool while the other is through fieldmeasurements and analysis. A hydrological model using the GIS system MapWindow, was used tosimulate the hydrological parameters of the sub-basins and computation was also made using aspreadsheet software package to estimate the instantaneous power that can be obtained along the riverstretch. The technically recoverable hydrokinetic power potential was computed by allocating a recoveryfactor to each river subdivision in the database and summing the product of the recovery factor and thetheoretical resource across the subdivisions. Results show there are potentials of this technology in theinvestigated southern River Niger basin. The total estimated value of the theoretical resource for thewatershed totals 826.7 MW while the estimated value for the technically recoverable resource totals 198.4MW. River Awun has the highest technically recoverable hydrokinetic power potential of 257.5 MW whileRiver Oshin has the lowest (20.9 MW).