The Hydroelectric Power Plant Performance

Energy is an important part of life producing the power of movement, heat, and production of electricity in many different ways. Therefore, choosing the correct source of energy is important for the environment and humans. Renewable energy that produces electricity never runs out, causing a lower environmental impact. Solar, Biomass, Wind, Geothermal, and Hydropower energy should be used globally to produce electricity. On the other hand, producing electricity from nonrenewable energy sources can be very harmful to humans and the environment. Humans can easily be dependent on it, which may not be the best option when it comes to finance, efficiency, sustainability and more. Approximately 52% of the US electricity comes from polluting sources like natural gas, oil, nuclear, and hydropower that have a lot of disadvantages effecting the environment in a negative way.

Moving into the next renewable energy, there is a big advantage that hydroelectric power is that hydropower dams is a huge renewable resource and using water to create electricity has no carbon footprint. As well as there is less pollution from it overall. There are many advantages but there are two distinct disadvantages, one of them being the cost to build an electric power station. The cost

From late 1960’s the demand of electricity started to increase and since then, the growth is gradually increasing until now. The population in the province has been growing three million per year since 1965 and it is predicted to keep growing in the future. The population growth causes scarcity of any resource. The supply of electricity from 1960’s till now was reasonably sufficient however, in the near future it has been predicted that the demand increases are growing faster than BC hydro can supply. Therefore, BC needs some other way to increase the supply of electricity and the substitute that BC hydro found is hydroelectricity (Site

Energy related activities are the primary source of human caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada, and electrical power generated from fossil fuels is contributing to the rise in those emissions. Hydropower as a source of electricity is a feasible low carbon alternative, as dams and reservoirs have low greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions compared to fossil fuel energy generation. Canada has harnessed this potential power source as it is the world’s third largest producer of hydropower, contributing 12% globally, behind China and Brazil (Lee, Cheng, & Scheelar, 2011). Hydropower as a source of electricity has a lot of potential in British Columbia (BC), a western Canadian province. British Columbia along with Quebec comprise 2/3rds of the country’s presently developed hydropower capacity and have 50% of undeveloped capacity (Lee, Cheng, & Scheelar, 2011). 90% of BC’s electricity comes from hydropower, so pushing for completely renewable sources of electricity is realistic in this province (Fuamba & Mahdi, 2012). This proposal aims to implement multiple small-scale run-of-river hydropower facility in BC to provide low carbon electricity for the each local region. This proposal will address the strengths and weaknesses of hydropower, the different technologies and facilities available, and economic and geographical factors relevant to British Columbia.

Hydroelectric is a form of energy it is a renewable resource. Hydroelectricity is the most important and widely used renewable source of energy. Hydroelectric relies on water, which is clean and renewable energy source. Renewable energy comes from natural resources. Non-Renewable energy source includes coal, oil and natural gas. Water is renewable because water continually recycles itself. To harness energy from flowing water, the water must be controlled; a large reservoir is created, usually by damming a river to create an artificial lake or reservoir. Water is channeled through tunnels in the dam. The energy of water flowing through the dam causes the turbines to turn and make the

Hydroelectric power plant is one of the major power plants all over the world in order to create electricity. It is also one of the best renewable energy sources on the planet earth. In ranking, Canada is the third largest country to produce hydroelectricity power. The efficiency of this power source is 90% and this is very impressive as the percentage of efficiency is very high. Hydro power plants generate 24% of the world’s electricity. More than 1 billion people are associated with hydro power plants as they use the power supply from hydro power plants.

The lower Mattagami Hydroelectric Complex consist of a total four generating stations located on the Mattagami river. Starting from South to North they are; Little Long, Smoky falls, Harmon, and Kipling. Located approximately 70 kilometres northeast of Kapuskasing and roughly 150 Kilometres Upstream of Moose Factory and Moosonee. Little long went service in 1963, Harmon in 1965, Kipling 1966 while Smoky falls went into service in 1931 and now has the capacity of about 50 megawatts. One megawatt can produce enough electricity to power 1000 homes. Due to the Age and Size of smoky falls compared to the other three and moreover how Smoky falls doesn’t use the water as efficient as the others. Ontario Power Generation (OPG) proposed to shut it

Summary - Per your request, I have completed the study of the Gordtontown BAC Power Plant. In general, I found that the plant has an appearance of surface clean, but several areas of maintenance and critical work areas have been neglected. There is a clear disconnect between the required level of preventive maintenance and that which is actually completed. I would most strongly recommend that you take steps to immediately have a preventive maintenance plan drafted, and ensure that this plan is carried out with regularity. In addition, I believe that the plant would benefit greatly with the installation of a Corland 200-power panel. Your Weston flow meters had not been serviced in over three years, and were old, in need of cleaning, and calibration. It is advisable that you bring in a Weston technical crew to handle this, but then keep up on the regular maintenance. This suggestion met with considerable enthusiasm from several of your engineers.

“Worldwide, hydropower facilities possess a significant amount of installed electric generating capacity. IEA statistics indicate that at the end of 2001 there was in excess of 450,000 MW of installed capacity within IEA member countries, with about half in Europe and half in North America. In addition to conventional hydropower, there is more than 80,000 MW of installed pumped-hydro capacity in IEA countries. In contrast, utility-scale wind power is relatively new in the electric market, but increasing rapidly” (Integration of Wind and Hydropower Systems)

Hydroelectric power is a reliable source of energy. In fact, it has been the greatest source of energy to many countries such as India, Columbia, United States, and Canada. Hydroelectric energy has a little instability with regards to the supply of electricity as long as there is water available on earth. Moreover, the construction of dams is long-lasting.

The installed capacity of hydro power is 300 gigawatts (2.57 times of that for 2005);

With the high-speed economic development and the incredible growth in human population around the world, electricity demand has increased rapidly (Zarfl et al., 2015). As a fast growing country with the largest population in the world, the electricity generation in China nearly doubled between 2005 and 2011 (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2014). In order to narrow the gap between electricity generation and consumption and, on the other hand, alleviate the environment problems mainly caused by fossil fuel, China has encouraged more investment in renewable energy (Ibid). Hydroelectricity has become the most important renewable resource as China has a large amount of hydroelectric power potential (Ibid). The word “hydroelectric” relates to “the generation of electricity using flowing water to drive a turbine which powers a generator” (Oxford Dictionaries online, 2015). Electricity produced by using

Water hammer or hydraulic transient is an unsteady flow phenomenon which is commonly found in closed conduits of hydropower station, water transmission networks, and liquid pipeline systems. Acute transients events in a hydraulic system often result from accidents and mishaps. Significant disturbances may occur in a hydro power station and causes a rapid change in the flow rate of the system during some operational conditions such as load rejection, load acceptances, and instant load rejection. This would, in turn, generates fluid transients in the hydraulic conveyance system, namely the penstocks, resulting in unacceptably low or high pressures in the penstocks depending on the triggering mechanism of the transients. Eventually, if not protected properly, the penstock may burst or collapse and human loss in some cases. The present paper reviews the available literature summarizing the effect of hydraulic transients on hydro power stations. Also an attempt has been made to analyze the effect of diameter, materials of the penstock on water hammer. The reviewed literature has shown that with the increase in diameter the effect of water hammer would reduce to as extent. It was also observed that with the change in material used in the fabrication of the penstock, the effect of water hammer change remarkably.

The concepts of Carbon Emissions Pinch Analysis (CEPA) techniques and Energy Return of Investment (EROI), with special attention to the methodology and system boundaries of EROI analysis have been reviewed in this literature. The analyses of EROI results for different fuel types especially EROI results of hydropower plants are also presented. The essential features of storage type hydropower plants also have been generally discussed as an important part of EROI’s Energy input calculation. Special attention will now be given to the hydropower resources in Myanmar in Chapter 3 and the detailed discussion of storage type hydropower plants will be addressed.

With lot of new canals built, the opportunity to build new dams becomes very easy in turn giving more feasibility in producing more hydro-electric power from the plants.