Water as an energy resource: hydroelectric power plant

2012

Water has always been one of mankind's most vital resources. While the human body can go weeks without food, it can only survive for a couple of days without water consumption. Crops in the field will shrivel and die without a readily available supply. We use it for cleaning; we use it for cooking. And since almost the start of recorded history, we have used it as an energy source. Some of the first recorded mentions of hydropower go back over 2,000 years ago to ancient Greece and Egypt, where water wheels were connected to grindstones to turn wheat into flour. Harnessing water for this laborious task allowed for large quantities of food to be processed, which allowed for job specialization and civilization to grow. Later, these same water wheels were connected to rudimentary equipment such as lathes, saw blades, and looms in order to produce such goods as furniture and fabric. By the 1700's, factories were mass-producing these products, which allowed for even more specialization of jobs and the growth of large cities. The invention of the electrical generator in the late 1800's produced a new way to exploit hydropower for the growth of civilization. By marrying water turbines to generators with belts and gears, a reliable source of electricity was created that could be used to power factories and businesses around the clock. The large supply of rivers and streams in the Eastern U.S. became a readily-available source of energy that was quickly exploited. The first hydroelectric power plant was built in Niagara Falls in 1881 to power street lights in the city. Before the end of that decade, over 200 additional power plants were built in the U.S. 1 The creation of the Bureau of Reclamation in 1902 further sped the development of hydroelectric power in the U.S. The Bureau was created to "reclaim" arid lands in the U.S. and make them farmable and livable. This was to be done by providing irrigation water for homesteaders in the Western U.S. who had been lobbying for more water to operate their farms and ranches. In order to meet these needs, the Bureau set out on a dam building program throughout the region. Initially, the dams were funded by selling land and mineral leases. From 1902 to 1928, this resulted in about 60 dams being built, of which 7 had hydroelectric units attached. However, in 1928, the Boulder Canyon Project Act was passed, which started U.S. Treasury funding of projects as well as allowing the selling of electricity from hydroelectric facilities. Over the following 40 years, it resulted in over 160 additional dams being built, with 49 of these having hydroelectric facilities 2. This dam building spurt created a massive increase in the amount of hydroelectric energy produced, tripling it from 1 quadrillion BTU's of energy to over 3 quadrillion by the late 1970's. Figure 1 shows a plot of the amount of hydroelectric energy produced in the U.S. since the 1880's 3. The year 1968, though, saw the last major dam building projects for the Bureau passed by Congress. This was done with the Colorado River Basin Projects Act. Since that time, the Bureau has built fewer than 20 dams, and hydroelectric capacity has leveled off. Environmental Problems What happened to this resource that once showed such great potential for growth? At one time, hydroelectric power accounted for almost 40% of America's electrical consumption. Today, it is closer to 7%. From 1980 until today, there has been no appreciable increase in hydroelectric power production,

Hydroelectric Power Generation Dr. Osama Mohammed Elmardi Suleiman Khayal, 2019

It's a form of energy … a renewable resource. Hydropower provides about 96 percent of the renewable energy in the United States. Other renewable resources include geothermal, wave power, tidal power, wind power, and solar power. Hydroelectric power plants do not use up resources to create electricity nor do they pollute the air, land, or water, as other power plants may. Hydroelectric power has played an important part in the development of this Nation's electric power industry. Both small and large hydroelectric power developments were instrumental in the early expansion of the electric power industry. Hydroelectric power comes from flowing water … winter and spring runoff from mountain streams and clear lakes. Water, when it is falling by the force of gravity, can be used to turn turbines and generators that produce electricity. Hydroelectric power is important to our Nation. Growing populations and modern technologies require vast amounts of electricity for creating, building, and expanding. In the 1920's, hydroelectric plants supplied as much as 40 percent of the electric energy produced. Although the amount of energy produced by this means has steadily increased, the amount produced by other types of power plants has increased at a faster rate and hydroelectric power presently supplies about 10 percent of the electrical generating capacity of the United States. Hydropower is an essential contributor in the national power grid because of its ability to respond quickly to rapidly varying loads or system disturbances, which base load plants with steam systems powered by combustion or nuclear processes cannot accommodate.

With the energy becoming the current catch phase in business, industry and society, energy alternative are becoming increasingly popular. Hydroelectricity exists as one option to meet the growing demand for energy and also a reliable renewable resource. In simple terms, inexpensive and reliable electricity is critical to the sustained economic growth and security of any nation. Today's world is dependent on reliable, low cost and abundant energy. In nature energy cannot be created or destroyed, but its form can change. People have been using water to their advantage for thousands of years. With the passage of the time they are now using moving water for power generation. By using water for power generation, people have worked nature to achieve a better life style. In generating hydropower electricity kinetic energy of moving water is converted to electrical energy. Since water is the initial source of energy, we call this hydroelectric power or hydropower in short. Worldwide, an...

Energy Policy, 2002

Technically feasible hydropower potential estimated at nearly 15 000 TW h/yr still exists in the world today, mostly in countries where increased power supplies from clean and renewable sources are most urgently needed to progress social and economic development. While it is not realistic to assume that all of this potential will be developed in the short or even medium term, it is clear that hydro has a substantial role to play in world energy supply. It can also offer a number of environmental and technical advantages, in terms of avoided generation based on fossil fuels. This paper reviews the current role hydropower is playing in the world, along with some its inherent benefits, and then looks at the remaining potential, and some specific development plans in various regions of the world. Attention is drawn to the advantages of developing hydropower as part of a multipurpose water resources scheme, often enabling it to subsidize other valuable functions of a reservoir or river system.

Green Health: An A-to-Z Guide, 2011

The inherent technical, economic and environmental benefits of hydroelectric power make it an important contributor to the future world energy mix, particularly in the developing countries. These countries have a great and ever-intensifying need for power and water supplies and they also have greatest remaining hydro potential.

In this work we summarized the all the concepts of hydropower plants dams as well as all hydropower plants. Introduction There are many ways to generate electricity in modern day. One of them is to use the gravitational force of falling water, which is also known as hydroelectricity. Hydroelectricity occurs in a dam, where the falling water is used to generate enough force to turn a turbine that is connected to an electricity generator. With this action, potential energy of water is transformed into mechanical energy and then into electrical energy. This is both an efficient and green way of generating electricity: it is not as hard as the geothermal electricity because people do not have to find a perfect area to generate it; and it is also not as polluting as the nuclear power plants are. Therefore, hydroelectricity is much greener than the nuclear power plants which generate electricity, and much easier to generate than the geothermal electricity, where it is economically attractive, provides security of supply and has low levels of COR 2 Remissions Hydropower has been using in thirty country worldwide and its production is estimated at 1/5 total global production with 90% efficiency. The greatest benefit from the hydropower program is the abundant low-cost energy the projects contribute to electric power grids. Because hydroelectric power plants burn no fuel, operating costs are low and are immune to rising fossil fuel prices, when construction costs were low. As a result, these plants are playing a significant role in keeping electricity costs affordable for consumers, creating a positive impact on the economy. Not only, but a dams which use to produce energy also used to irrigation and keep water to expected drought periods. So hydropower is considered a major renewable energy where it just produce through magnetic induction, the generator converts the mechanical energy of the turbines to electricity. In Sudan there's 92% primary energy consumption comes from fossil fuels and 8% from hydropower. However, the current installed capacity is about 60% of hydropower. The country is making efforts to integrate more renewable energy resources and seeks 11% of renewable electricity generation except hydropower by 2031. Sudan has also adopted a national energy efficiency plan in 2012 and has set cumulative energy efficiency targets of 11.8% and seeks 32% by 2020[1, 2, and 3] Classification of Hydropower Plants According to Capacity Hydropower plants classified according its capacity to six types large, medium, small, mini, micro, pico and will be discuss below in details [4]. 1. Large hydropower plants: >100 MW 2. Medium hydropower plants: 25-100 MW 3. Small: 1-25 MW

The study focuses on the Environmental Factors that are necessary for Hydroelectric Power Generation. . The hydroelectric power plant instructional device was designed for showing the similar process of hydroelectric power plant in generating electricity to the small villages. Based on the evaluation conducted, the factors were proven to be highly acceptable based on the given criteria on aesthetics, functionality and reliability. The study really supports the findings of the researchers about the project. The research project “Environmental Factors Necessary for Hydroelectric Power Generation.” will be used in laboratory purposes and the findings can also help our instructors in demonstrating and explaining about hydroelectric power plant.

Hydroelectricity was, for many years, one of the main ways to meet the new electricity needs of Latin American countries. This is evidenced by the presence of some of the larger plants worldwide and the high hydroelectric participation in all electricity matrices (Figure 1). Faced with growing prospects for future economic development, an underlying concern is how to respond to the important and growing demands for electricity. In several countries, governments and electric companies have opted to continue with the construction of hydropower plants, especially large-scale ones, as the main means of meeting this challenge. However, major projects formulated in recent years have been put in check by various difficulties, some even stopped. Despite the different political, regulatory, and economic conditions that exist in Latin America, there are common elements in the difficulties faced by these projects. While in the past, large-scale hydroelectricity was the successful response to higher electricity consumption, societies have changed, and this technology faces new cultural, social, and political conditions.

2019

Brazil’s high historical dependency on hydroelectricity, coupled with recent severe droughts in the Southeast and the Northeast, has unveiled water availability issues that affect the electricity sector. The relationship of water and energy and its importance is recognised in literature, but there is still scope for advancements regarding methods for the link between resources. By using the Water-Energy Nexus concept, this study suggests a model calculating evaporation and water consumption of hydropower, as well as performing a water budget analysis for individual reservoirs, states, and regions for the Brazil case study. The analysis is performed for 163 reservoirs for the time periods 2010-2016 and 2015-2049. The model was designed to overcome spatial and temporal issues that inhibit water models to be meaningfully linked to energy models. The time step for evaporation and water consumption is hourly, and daily for the water budget analysis, while political spatial boundaries are...