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| Hydropower |
Hydropower is energy that is generated by moving water. Today, hydropower facilities make electricity by converting kinetic (moving) energy into mechanical (machine) energy as water flows in a river or over a dam. Electricity made at hydropower facilities can be carried away, via power transmission lines, and sold to homes and businesses. Hydropower is a relatively inexpensive, non-polluting form of renewable energy.
Canada and the United States are currently the world’s top hydroelectric producers. Other countries that use hydropower on a large scale include Brazil, China, Russia, Norway, Japan, India, Iceland, Sweden, and France. Hydropower produces about 10% of United States’ electricity, in contrast to Norway, who generates nearly 99% of its electricity from hydropower.
Hydropower is used nationwide, but is primarily used in the western coastal United States where other energy resources such as coal are limited. Hydropower is important to the United States economy because it supplies electricity to a growing population and industry.
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Hydropower in history
Humans have harnessed water power for thousands of years, using the mechanical energy of moving water to turn wooden wheels to power mills that sawed lumber and processed grains. Water either fell onto the wheel and caused it to turn or the wheel was placed in the river and the river’s current (a steady flow of water in a prevailing direction) turned the wheel. The wheel was attached to other levers and gears inside the mill that did the work needed.
During the 1700s to 1800s, mechanical hydropower was used extensively in the United States and elsewhere for milling and pumping. It began to be widely used to supply electricity in the late 1800s. In 1882 the world’s first hydropower facility was built on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin. The Fox River facility generated electricity for local industries.
By the 1920s, following the development of the electrical motor and the demand for electricity that followed, hydropower accounted for about 40% of the U.S. electricity supply. Since then, other energy technologies have developed that are less expensive than hydropower.
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) signed the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Act. The purpose of the TVA was to construct dams on the Tennessee River that would aid in river navigation, control flooding, provide water for irrigation (watering crops) and drinking, and provide hydropower to Tennessee River Valley residents.
In the American West, hydropower aided in the production of the dams themselves, moving and lifting construction materials and providing energy for lights to make round-the-clock work possible. Surplus energy was sold to neighboring farms and homes, which in turn paid for the operation and building costs of the dams.
Hydropower facility development was at its peak during the 1930s and 1940s. The Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border and the Grand Coulee dam located on the Columbia River in Washington state were constructed during this period. The Grand Coulee dam remains the largest concrete structure in the United States.
Hydroelectric technology
Electricity is one of the most important types of energy because it allows people to perform the work needed to light homes and power appliances and computers. Hydro-power generation utilizes the principles of electromagnetic induction (creating an electrical current, the flow of electricity, by moving a magnet through a wire coil), first described by English chemist and physicist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) in 1831 when he made the first generator.
A generator is a machine that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy. Energy is the power to do work. Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it merely changes state, as occurs when electrical energy is harnessed from the mechanical energy of moving water.
No matter the type or size of the hydropower facility, electricity is generated in much the same way in each one. The dam or the natural elevation drop in a river creates head, or a certain height over which the water flows as it is released from the dam or as it flows downstream.
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As water is released from a reservoir in an impoundment or pumped storage facility, or diverted from a river through a control gate, it flows by gravity (the attraction between two masses) to a turbine. A turbine is a device that transforms the energy in moving fluid or wind to rotary mechanical energy.
As the water flows past the turbine blades, the turbine blades spin and turn a rotor (the moving part of an electric generator) much like wind spins a pinwheel. Giant magnets inside the rotor move past coils of copper wire and create an alternating current. An alternating current (AC) is produced when electrons wiggle back and forth between atoms. The used water returns to the river through pipes.
The alternating current moves through a series of devices called transformers that can increase the voltage (energy required to move a charge from one point to another, similar to pressure). The increase in voltage allows the electricity to travel faster and more efficiently through power lines (important when the hydropower facility is in a remote location) from the hydropower facility to a town’s electricity facility. At the local facility transformers are used again to reduce the voltage to a level that is safe for the electricity to be used in homes and businesses.
Types of hydropower facilities
There are three types of hydropower facilities: impoundment, pumped storage, and diversion. Impoundment and pumped storage facilities require dams. In the United States, hydropower is a very small percentage of the primary purpose of dams. Usually a dam is built first for other reasons, such as water storage and flood control, and a hydropower facility is incorporated later if there is a demonstrated need for electricity.
Impoundment facilities require a large dam that allows river water to be stored in a reservoir. When water is released from the reservoir, the water flows downward through a penstock (pipe) in the dam and spins turbines, thereby creating mechanical energy that is then used to power electric generators. Transmission lines carry electricity away from the impoundment facility to local distributors who sell the electricity to homes and businesses.
Pumped storage hydropower facilities also require dams to operate. In periods of low electricity demand water is pumped from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir. When electrical demand increases, water is released from the higher reservoir back into the lower reservoir through a penstock, turning turbines that power electric generators.
Pumped storage and impoundment hydropower facilities provide a reliable source of electricity because water flow from reservoirs can be controlled so that electricity production meets demand.
Diversion hydropower facilities (sometimes called run-of-river systems) are smaller than impoundment facilities and do not require a dam. Instead, diversion facilities use a river’s natural flow to generate electricity. The amount of electricity produced depends upon the river’s rate of flow (volume of water flow within a period of time) and the river’s elevation change at the diversion facility site.
In diversion hydropower facilities, river water is channeled through a canal (artificial waterway that controls water flow, in this case, to a turbine) or penstock. Diversion facilities are less reliable than impoundment or pumped storage facilities because flow rates in rivers can change drastically depending on the amount of rainfall or spring meltwater that supplies the river.
Sizes of hydropower facilities
The size of a hydropower facility depends upon the amount of energy that can be generated at the facility. Some hydropower plants may produce electricity for only one to a few homes. These facilities are called micro-hydropower plants. In micro-hydropower facilities the total change in elevation of the flowing water is only about 100 feet (30 meters).
Energy output can be increased, however, with higher water flow. Larger hydroelectric power facilities such as the Hoover power plant in Nevada, however, can provide electricity to more than one million consumers.
