Hydropower

Engineering
Mohammed A.
 Hydropower engineering concepts
• Heat from the sun causes large amounts of water vapor to rise, thus
raising its potential energy. Clouds serve to concentrate the vapor
into droplets which fall as rain on high ground. This is further
concentrated by natural channeling into rivers, providing a
convenient source of ‘free’ renewable fuel.
• Extracting energy from the water consists of:
 Diverting some of the water into an artificial channel (leat)
 Providing some water storage to even out the flow & head (mill-pond)
 Using a machine to convert the energy in the water into rotational
mechanical energy (waterwheel)
 Controlling system inflow (sluice gate) & mechanical o/p (gear
engagement)
• These essential features exist in some of the earliest historical
descriptions of hydropower systems and are still recognizable in
the most sophisticated of modern day installations.
 Hydroelectricity
• Hydropower could now be produced at the most advantageous sites
– mountains and lakes offering an ample supply of water and a high
head – and transmitted to the towns and cities where it would be
used.
• It is no coincidence that 98.5% of Norway’s electricity supply in
2008 came from hydroelectricity!
• It is generally recognised that hydroelectricity is a clean, efficient
and reliable form of energy whose contribution to greenhouse gas
emissions is negligible compared to fossil fuels.
• It is also an effective technology for flood protection and
stabilisation of water supply.
• Hydroelectric stations tend to be reliable, long-lived and have
relatively low operating costs.
Cont’d…
• However, large-scale hydroelectric schemes do have
some well-known drawbacks:
Establishing the reservoirs often requires large-scale
displacement of the human population, which leads to
criticism and local opposition and particularly so if inadequate
compensation is offered.
The environment is affected – animal and plant life is
disrupted and delicate ecosystems can sometimes be put in
peril.
The course and flow of river systems can be altered, which can
be contentious if the watercourse crosses national boundaries.
Cont’d…
• Once the technical feasibility of a site has been established and
environmental factors resolved, there remains the question of
economic viability.
• Conventional hydroelectric schemes have a high initial capital
cost and long construction period.
• Naturally, most of the best sites have already been used, so the
continued expansion of hydroelectricity depends on a
combination of factors:
• Acceptable construction costs and availability of investment
finance
• Cost of competing energy sources
• Development of sizeable power markets reasonably near to the
proposed hydroelectric site
• Prices that support the cost of transmission to distant markets
Pumped-Storage Hydroelectricity & Grid Control
• The special characteristics of hydroelectric power became apparent
almost as soon as different types of power plant were connected to
a common power network.
• It was recognised that they were especially well suited to
regulating the network as well as fulfilling the normal role of a
power source.
• As a result, a specialized form of hydroelectric plant known as
pumped storage was devised.
• It is generally thought that the principle of pumped hydro was first
demonstrated in 1882. It consisted of a hydro-mechanical storage
system that operated a pump and turbine for nearly a decade at a
small reservoir near Zurich, Switzerland
• The essential idea is to store some of the electricity produced at
night, when the load is light, and to use it during the day, when the
load is heavy.
 Cont’d…
• Water is pumped to a high reservoir using relatively cheap
base-load electricity and then released back to a low
reservoir for generation, when demand on the power
network is high.
• Losses in the conversion process mean that a pumped
storage scheme is a net consumer of electricity but the
difference between day and night prices allows the operator
to make a profit.
• Hydroelectric plants are more responsive than thermal plant
– their output can be varied between zero and full load in a
matter of minutes, or even seconds in some cases.
• Therefore used to compensate for sudden load transients on
the power network, sometimes known as ‘peak-lopping’.
 Cont’d…
• Modern pumped storage plant are constructed for fast response
duties and are equipped with advanced control systems for
continuous automatic control of network frequency (sometimes
known as ‘partload’ operation).
• More recently, an extended role for pumped storage as a means of
compensating for the intermittent nature of renewable power
sources is foreseen.
• Today, the global capacity of pumped hydro storage plants totals
more than 95 GW and at the moment it remains the only large-scale
form of energy storage.
 Cont’d…
• The most efficient operating point of a pump-turbine varies with
head, flow and speed. As a consequence, the efficiency of a machine
rotating at synchronous speed and subject to head variation (as the
upper reservoir drains) will vary.
• This has stimulated the development of adjustable-speed pump-
turbines whose speed can be varied to track the most efficient
operating point.
• This problem is effectively overcome by the doubly fed
asynchronous generator.
• High-power electronics in the form of a voltage source inverter is
used to inject a slip frequency current into the rotor winding so that
the electrical frequency of the stator is made synchronous with the
network.
• It allows pumped storage plants to provide a frequency control
service while in ‘pumping’ mode.
 Small-Scale and Hydrokinetic Systems
• The IEEE Standard 1020-1988 admits that the term ‘small hydroelectric power
plant’ does not lend itself to rigorous definition so, a number of attributes that
help to classify:
 Have unit rating between 100 and 5,000 kW and generated voltages between
480V and 13.8 kV. (The term ‘micro-hydro’ refers to unit rating below 100 kW)
 Have either synchronous or induction AC generators
 Are commonly applied where associated civil construction work and costs are
minimal
 Are equipped for unattended operation
 Are generally connected to a distribution circuit for supplying a local load, with
surplus generation sold to a power company
• Most small hydro plants are ‘run-of-river’ schemes, meaning that they have little
or no water storage and the turbine only produces power when the river level
allows.
• They are also relatively low head schemes, the ultimate case being hydrokinetic
power, referring to the extraction of energy from moving water which occurs in:
 Tidal flow
 Ocean currents
 Ocean waves
 Rivers
 Cont’d…
• In contrast to conventional hydro schemes, it avoids impoundment or any
substantial diversion of water from its natural path. Because hydrokinetic
turbines are small and operate in-stream, there is no need for the
construction of dams, barrages or lagoons or any large civil works.
• Their main advantages are claimed to be:
 Minimal environmental impact
 Relatively short time from construction to operation
 Competitive energy price
 Predictable and reliable energy production
• Like windmills, hydrokinetic turbines extract only the kinetic energy of
the flow and they are sometimes known as ‘ultra-low-head’ or ‘free-flow’
turbines because there is no pressure drop across them. Many different
types have been proposed, including:
• Submerged, part-submerged, floating
• Vertical or horizontal axis
• With or without diffuser (to augment inflow)
• Uni-directional or bi-directional (for tidal flow)
• Turbine/non-turbine technology
 Cont’d…
• As with other renewable sources, the intermittent nature of small
hydro makes it difficult to integrate large numbers of producers
onto a power network while maintaining the stability and control
which balances production and consumption and ensures quality of
supply.
• By and large, this form of distributed generation only becomes
possible when the correct framework is put in place, including:
Government feed-in tariffs
Improved electronics and change of legislation to allow small
generators to feed power into the grid
Upgraded transmission and distribution networks
Communications, information and control technology to allow
implementation of a ‘Smart-Grid’