Browsing by Subject "Kustannus-hyötyanalyysi"

The Master's thesis examines the profitability of small hydropower production and the factors affecting it in Finland. During the last century, almost all of Finland's watercourses have been dammed for the needs of industry and energy production. Hydropower is detrimental to the aquatic ecosystem and to migratory fish, which are unable to ascend to their breeding grounds. The impact of hydropower production on fish stocks can be reduced, for example, by fishways, but for the smallest power plants, building a fishway is a big investment. The purpose of the study is to build a calculation model that can be used to assess the profitability of a small hydropower plant renovation investment or the construction of a fishway. Society’s pressure to make solutions that reconcile hydropower and water ecology is growing all the time. It is therefore important to be able to analyze cases where the construction of fishway or the repair of a hydropower plant is not socially viable, but efforts should be made to dismantle the dam and restore the stream water ecosystem. The method of assessing profitability is the private cost-benefit analysis and the net present value method. The calculation model can be used to estimate when it is not worth investing in small hydropower plants, but the model does not directly tell when the investment would be profitable, as it only takes into account the largest sections of costs and does not take into account environmental damage. The dissertation also makes example calculations for three small hydropower plants: Kantturakoski, Ritakoski and Kangaskoski. The aim is to find out the main factors influencing the profitability of small hydropower production and to clarify the understanding of what the future of small hydropower production looks like. According to the results of the study, the construction of the Kantturakoski fishway is not profitable from the owner's point of view. The net present values for the repair of the Ritakoski and Kangaskoski power plants in Hiitolanjoki and the construction of the fishway are positive. The sensitivity analysis showed that the net present values of the projects depend in particular on the price of electricity and the operating and maintenance costs of the power plant.