French company presents Georgia’s hydro power roadmap

French company Electricite de France (EDF ) has presented to the Georgian State Electrosystem (GSE) a Hydro Power Roadmap that analyses the potentiality of hydroelectricity power for Georgia from 2020 to 2035. 

The roadmap was co-financed by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), KfW and the European Union (EU).

The goal of the project was to build a hydro management roadmap, which will define the priority list of actions to better evaluate expected river run-off and the streamflow: re-building a local hydrological measurement network, hydrological model simulations based on local and recent dataset and building a forecast center.

“France is keen to support the energy sector in Georgia and has done so, in close partnership with the European Union and Germany, now for many years. The partnership between AFD and KfW, and between us and our Georgian partners GSE and the Ministry of Economy, is a very successful one,” said H.E. Mr. Diego Colas, Ambassador of France in Georgia.

The technical assistance financed by the AFD started in 2019, in parallel with the public policy loan in the energy sector, co-financed by AFD, KfW and the European Union from 2018.

The first activity was carried out until the end of the year 2020, with the implementation by GSE, and by the support of EDF, of the first national plan for the expansion of the electricity production capacity over fifteen years (2020-2035). 

An objective assessment of Georgia’s hydrological potential is believed to facilitate the complex use of water resources and will have a positive impact on the country’s economic development. 

Predicting hydrology will enable hydropower plants in Georgia to carry out safe management of reservoirs, to use cascading effectively, to determine the optimization of water resources and energy, energy surplus and shortage.