Science Centres: Energy

Smart rainfall model varies season length

As part of the Climate-related Risks for Energy Supply and Demand research programme, NIWA is developing a tool to generate realistic synthetic rainfall time series. We all know that rainfall varies seasonally, and that the seasons don't align with an artificial pattern of three months per season per year. Drs John Sansom and Peter Thompson have devised a way to incorporate efficiently this seasonal variation into a statistical model of high resolution rainfall data.

This has potentially huge benefits in an electricity system as reliant on hydro generation as New Zealand’s. When assessing risks of long runs of dry weather, generators have tended to be conservative, based on analysis of similar years in the past. The new approach should improve risk management because generators will be able to run a realistic model to predict the variability expected in inflows for a given climate scenario.