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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?"
Dear editors/submitters for Slashdot stories:
Please eliminate the stupid leading/inflammatory/etc. questions at the end of the summaries. Anyone with an IQ higher than that of a grape has already mentally asked themselves far more insightful questions than the ones posed at the end of the summaries. You are just making yourselves look like idiots by asking them.
Sincerely,
An Old AC
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.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
When total energy required on the order of TWatts, you want to boast about 18GWatt being more than EVERYTHING already out there, hydro-wise?
No. Really. The ecological damage for that pittance of power just isn't worth it.
You're doing it wrong. You need to look at opportunity cost and give more than a vague comparison. The correct question from an environmental perspective is, "How does the environmental impact of 18 GW of micro-hydro compare to the environmental impact of the 18 GW of power that will be generated through other means in its absence?"
You fall into the trap of thinking any solution that isn't a silver bullet is useless. Sadly, this is how most decision making is done. Hell, your comment is probably better reasoned than most energy decisions made by governments in the form of legislation or about governments in the form of voting.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Here in Norway we got more mountains and rain per square kilometer or per person the US could dream about - okay we have a cold climate too - but not even we are self-sufficient on hydro power or for that matter renewable power. Sure as fossil fuels run out they'll surely be built - just like wind, water, solar, geothermal, biofuel and everything else you can think of - but they won't add up to the current energy usage. This figure pretty much says it all.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Now that is A Modest Proposal...
The answer is a solid NO .
Small scale hydro can make a heck of a lot of sense. I work with a small community high in the mountains of Washington State, where the primary power supply is a small scale hydro-electric generation system. The funny part is that this technology isn't "new"... The turbines and generators they're using have patent plates on them that read 10-04-86, and that's not 1986. Despite being easily 100 years old, the technology is still easy to maintain, and efficient. Based on the electrical output compared to the water flow, we figure this plant is about 80% efficient, which is pretty good.
In the summer, the system will generate upwards of 250kW of power, which is more than adequate for the community. In the winter, this does drop down to 30kW or so, but that is still more or less sufficient for the lower winter population.
The water supply for this system comes off a small creek flowing down the mountain, about 300' up there is a small diversion dam that the creek flows into. Water will either flow into the penstock, or continue down the creek depending on demand. As a side note, the water pressure is sufficient to push some of the water through the entire water treatment plant, and then into a storage tank, to supply the community's drinking water without the use of a single pump.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...