Basin Water Budgets and Small Hydropower Suitability
Regional Centre for Energy and Environmental Sustainability (RCEES), University of Energy and Natural ResourcesSenior Technical Officer and Project Communications SpecialistSep 2020 – Jan 2024
Basin-level water budgets and small hydropower suitability assessment across Ghana’s western river systems, with machine learning applied to basin condition and water stress affecting energy generation.
The post combined a modelling brief with a Centre-wide technical one. Basin-level water budgets were generated using GIS and hydrological modelling, and small hydropower suitability assessments were carried out across Ghana’s western river systems, treating generation potential and water availability as one accounting problem.
Machine learning in Python and R was applied to classify basin condition and predict water stress affecting energy generation — the analytical link between a hydrological state and an energy outcome, and the methodological basis for the small hydropower work that followed.
Alongside the technical work the role carried a communications mandate, and it fed the Centre’s research pipeline: three successful competitive research grant applications were supported, undergraduate research projects supervised, and graduate thesis development supported at RCEES.
