multi-purpose-water-storage-utac

GenesisAeon Package 112 — can one basin do it all? Grew out of a direct question during a conversation: if we build large artificial water basins (see glacier-buffer-replacement-utac, P100's AGBR reservoirs), could the same basins also generate power, store heat, and feed local wetlands and inland-waterway navigation channels? This package documents four real, independently quantified pieces of that question — then honestly documents what a dedicated search for a real INTEGRATED system actually found. Deliberately has no UTAC/CREP/AFET bridge — see DISCLAIMER.md.

For a plain-language explanation of the same topic (German, no jargon, written for general audiences), see WHITEPAPER.md.

Deliberately not one-sided

The navigation-weir module directly complicates the intuitive expectation that motivated this package: does_navigation_infrastructure_reconnect_wetlands_by_default() returns False — real, basin-wide Danube data shows navigation infrastructure disconnects wetlands by default (−68% floodplain extent vs. pre-regulation), not feeds them. And the closing module, is_integrated_system_literature_documented() (also False), is paired with absence_of_evidence_means_impossible() (also False) to make explicit that "not found in the literature" is a much weaker claim than "impossible."

What's real here

• Xiang, Xie, Furbo, Wang, Gao & Fan (2022, Journal of Energy Storage) — a real Pit Thermal Energy Storage (PTES) review, plus two real Danish cases with different cycle durations: Vojens (200,000 m³, world's largest, operational since 2015, >50% solar fraction, a genuine seasonal cycle) vs. Høje Taastrup (70,000 m³, 3,300 MWh, 30 MW, operational since 2023, explicitly a weekly cycle — PTES cycle duration is a design choice, not an inherent property of the technology).
• Dutch ATES deployment (KWR Water Research Institute / Deltares monitoring data, documented tier) — the Netherlands has an estimated 2,800–3,500+ Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage systems, the large majority below 25°C; the first full-scale high-temperature system only came online in Middenmeer in 2021. ATES depends on suitable confined-aquifer geology — it does not transfer automatically to arbitrary (e.g. alpine) terrain.
• Akbarichegeni & Yosefvand (2026, Irrigation and Drainage) — a real, peer-reviewed multiobjective-optimization study on re-operating reservoirs to supply environmental flow to the Bakhtegan wetland (Iran) — kept explicitly at the tier it supports: a real open research question with a proposed method, not a report of an already-implemented, measured outcome.
• Hein, Schwarz, Habersack, Nichersu, Preiner, Willby & Weigelhofer (2016, Science of the Total Environment) — the honesty-check citation, directly answering the inland-waterway question: Danube floodplain extent is down 68% versus the pre-regulation baseline, driven by navigation/hydropower/flood-protection infrastructure — though 8,102 km² is independently assessed as having restoration potential (75% high-potential), achievable only via deliberate retrofitting, not as an automatic byproduct.

Quickstart

pip install multi-purpose-water-storage-utac

from multi_purpose_water_storage_utac import (
    VOJENS, HOEJE_TAASTRUP, is_seasonal,
    NETHERLANDS_ATES, is_site_agnostic,
    is_modeling_study_not_implemented_case,
    DANUBE_FLOODPLAIN_STATUS, does_navigation_infrastructure_reconnect_wetlands_by_default,
    is_integrated_system_literature_documented, absence_of_evidence_means_impossible,
)

print(is_seasonal(VOJENS))            # True
print(is_seasonal(HOEJE_TAASTRUP))    # False
print(NETHERLANDS_ATES.system_count_low)  # 2800
print(is_site_agnostic())             # False
print(is_modeling_study_not_implemented_case())  # True
print(DANUBE_FLOODPLAIN_STATUS.loss_pct_vs_pre_regulation)  # 68.0
print(does_navigation_infrastructure_reconnect_wetlands_by_default())  # False
print(is_integrated_system_literature_documented())  # False
print(absence_of_evidence_means_impossible())         # False

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pre-commit install
ruff check src tests
mypy src
pytest

Citation

See CITATION.cff and .zenodo.json.