Hydropower has been originated to have a positive outcome on the quality of life of rural residents in many ways. It offers a wide range of facilities, such as amended lighting; energy for small industries, schools, computer and communication service centers, and clinics. Ethiopia has many dams built for irrigation and water supply, but these may still have the potential for other uses. One such dam is the Arjo Dedessa irrigation dam in West Ethiopia. Optimization models have been advanced to exploit the annual energy generation from the Arjo Dedessa dam, subject to the restriction of release for irrigation, ecological purposes, and the maximum yield from the reservoir, and reservoir storage. The model was explained with LINGO software for various mean annual inflow exceedance probabilities. Two scenarios of hydropower retrofitting were measured. Scenario of Independent Hydropower release with the reservoir inflows at 50%, 75%, and 90% probabilities of exceedance gives the total annual hydropower as 4.8 MW, 4.34 MW, and 0.99 MW, respectively. The matching values for the scenario of Complimentary Hydropower release were 5.27 MW, 4.55MW, and 1MW, respectively. The study also measured increasing the reservoir’s live storage to 1945.01Mm3 by taking part in the flood storage so that the maximum draft increases to 285.74 Mm3. With this upper limit of storage and draft with reservoir inflows of 50%, 75%, and 90% probabilities of exceedance, the hydropower produced increased to 6.51 MW, 4.54 MW, and 1.935 MW correspondingly for the scenario of Independent Hydropower release arrangement, while those of the scenario of Complimentary Hydropower release improved to 6.75 MW, 4.58 MW, and 1.94 MW respectively. The outcomes specify that the Arjo Dedessa Dam is appropriate for the production of hydroelectric power and that its generation potential is between 6.51 MW and 6.75MW.

Keywords: Irrigation Dam, Energy, Optimization, Linear Programming, Lingo,