Télénivométrie et imagerie satellitaire appliquées à la gestion prévisionnelle des stocks de neige : l'expérience d'EDF

Level telemetry and satellite imagery applied in the snow stocks forecasting : the experience of EDF

EDF - DTG - Mission Technique

Abstract

For EDF, the seasonal management anticipated of the hydroelectric reservoirs of valley head especially represents a very important energizing and economic stake when these are submitted to constraints of water multi-uses. The new context of opening of the electricity market reinforces this aspect surely. It is from the knowledge of the high and middle altitude snow cover and thanks to the measure of the precipitations of winter and spring, that EDF can calculate, since the beginning of the winter and until the end of the spring, of the forecastings actualized of replenishment contributions in the lakes of altitude. A modern network of devices of automatic measure of the equivalent in water of the layer of snow associated to complementary manual measures permits to follow non-stop the evolution of the resource and to actualize the forecasting of it to every variation important of the snow stock. The recourse to the satellite imagery can bring an interesting complement to the isolated observations of the snowy coat, notably in period of fusion, when the spatial heterogeneity of the coat is stronger and when the isolated measures cannot be considered as representative. But the state of the art on the subject and the related to economic costs slow down the potential operational use of these techniques.