Small Hydropower Advisor: Application and User Perspective

Abstract

The development of any micro or small hydro plant requires some preliminary considerations to study the feasibility of the project. Different expertise required at this first stage and awareness about legal and governmental issues make the feasibility study an expensive and time-consuming task for many who might like to examine such opportunities. To solve this problem and make both the technical and legal issues behind a hydropower development accessible and understandable to everyone, an expert system named Small Hydropower Advisor (SHA) was developed. Unlike usual expert systems that deal with specific tasks in a domain area, SHA not only involves different required expertise, but also avoids technical terminology (as much as possible) to keep the consultation as simple and understandable as possible to any inexpert user. This paper explains SHA from the application and user perspective.