Hydropower inventory studies of river basins in Brazil

One of the first initiatives of power sector expansion planning in Brazil is the Hydropower Inventory Studies. Through this initiative, every cascade option for the exploitation of hydroelectric potential of river basins must be studied, to select the schemes which gives the best balance in terms of energy, economics, and social and environmental aspects. To assist the inventory studies, a manual and a computerized decision support system (SINV) have been developed. This paper describes the adopted methodology for energy and socio-environmental studies and the multi-objective analysis for the cascade selection adopted in the manual. A case study is also presented using the SINV package.