Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The objective of this project is to implement a distributed hydrological modeling system on key watersheds ofthe Yukon Energy Corporation (YEC). This system will be used for operational reservoir-inflow forecastingwith different lead times (e.g., 1-14 days) as well as seasonal and long-term planning. Long-term planning willuse the modeling system to predict impacts of climate change on inflow availability, inflow timing and extremeevents. The results will provide strategic information for the assessment of potential energy projects to supplyYukon with enough electricity to meet projected demands. Understanding climate change and associatedeffects will be useful to other processes such as relicensing activities. For example, the water license for theAishihik Hydroelectric Facility will come up for renewal on December 31, 2019. In anticipation for thisrenewal, YEC is undertaking a four-year process of environmental and engineering studies, consulting withmajor stakeholders. This will follow a structured decision-making process to understand operationalalternatives for the renewed license to submit to the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic AssessmentBoard for assessment, then to the Yukon Water Board for licensing.