Watershed Management for Micro Hydropower Plant Sustainability: Malabar, Indonesia

The purpose of this research is to analyze the watershed management system for the sustainability of hydropower plants. The two main parameters needed to produce electrical energy are water flow and head. Water flow depends on the watershed area, rainfall, and land cover, which affects the runoff and infiltration volume. Good land cover has a large infiltration volume so that it can infiltrate rainwater into the ground and become the reserved water to maintain base flow during the dry season. Malabar Micro Hydropower Plant (MHP), Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, was selected as the case study. There are no significant land-use changes in this area resulting in a stable base flow, which allows MHP to work well until now. The base flow can be continuously maintained at a value not less than 3 $m^{3}/s$, the same as the designed discharge of the power plant. The land-use changes are possible as long as the flow is not lower than the minimum base flow. It can be employed by using a high infiltration coefficient of land cover and artificial recharge groundwater techniques..