Hoover Dams For Lilliput: Does Small Hydroelectric Power Have a Future?

New submitter MatthewVD writes "Boing Boing's Maggie Koerth-Baker, author of Before The Lights Go Out, writes that the era of giant hydroelectric projects like the Hoover Dam has passed. But the Department of Energy has identified 5,400 potential sites for small hydro projects of 30 MWs or less. The sites, in states as dry as Kansas, represent a total 18,000 MW of power — enough to increase by 50 percent America's hydro power. Even New York City's East River has pilot projects to produce power from underwater turbines. As we stare down global warming and peak oil, could small hydroelectric power be a key solution?"

Comments

The finicky environmentalist

[crazyjj]

One of my biggest problems with the environmentalist "movement" (and, in fairness, it's really more a mish-mash of a bunch of somewhat different movements) is its propensity for embracing fashionable fads and then tossing them aside the second some new thing comes along. Hydro was once the darling of clean energy, but then someone started complaining about the poor fish not being able to spawn as good as before, and so it was tossed aside like some embarrassing stepchild--in favor of the current green stars-of-the-moment, wind and solar. This in spite of the fact that hydro has BY FAR the longest and most productive history of any of the green energy generators. There are still working dams out there today that have been generating electricity for close to a century (probably some over a century now).

Makes me wonder how long it will be before someone finds fault with wind and solar and those get tossed aside for some new fad too.