3.

2 - HYDROPOWER: What are the current challenges about

Hydropower development? - Farid MAZZOUJI

Hello, I’m Farid MAZZOUJI, and I’m from GE, and I’m heading the Hydraulic R&D. I will
speak to you about few challenges and the revolution that hydroelectricity is starting and
living today. It is about flexibility, it is about gigantism, it is about refurbishment and
revamping and about digital world.

Flexibility & energy storage

A lot of new unpredictable energy that is coming in the network today like wind, or like solar.
And the only way to keep the network stable, and to keep it power consumption equal to
power production is to release or to inject the power in a few tens of seconds.

And the only way to do this, is Hydro. Something like 1000 Gigawatts in Hydro were installed
in the world up to now. And they were all operating at their best efficiency point.

Now the revolution is that we are making them operate out of their design point that is to say,
off-design. And we are facing therefore physical phenomena that they could be harmful for
the machines like vibration or gravitation
cavitation or other things.

So this is one of the biggest challenges that we are facing now and there is a lot of R&D
ongoing for this.

3.2 - HYDROPOWER - Farid MAZZOUJI - page 1

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Gigantism

Second thing I would like to highlight is the gigantism.

Why gigantism? You may have heard about Hydro, that we will be in 2050 by 2050.
It is to say, 2050 Gigawatts by 2050, the year 2050. And one has to know also that only one
third of the potential economically feasible capacity in the world are tapped.

That is to say 2 third are still untapped. And this is why we can go further for gigantism.
Just to illustrate, I can give you the example of Three Gorges. I can sum it up in few
numbers:

- So, what is 10 ? 10 is the diameter of the runner of Three Gorges,

- 100 is the head, the difference between the upstream and the downstream level,
- the flow that is going through each and every turbine is 1000 ​m3​​ /s. ​For thoses who
know the Rhône, the Rhône is by Lyon 1000 ​m3​​ /s,
- and there are 32 machines, that is to say the plant is generating 22 GW: it is 1/5 of
the energy generated in France.

Digital world & hydro

To maintain the fleet, to keep the fleet very good and very robust, we have to follow it up and
this is where digital world enters into Hydro.

And we have therefore sensors, to follow up the behavior of a machine, a cascade or a

whole fleet and even a full fleet of all means.

3.2 - HYDROPOWER - Farid MAZZOUJI - page 2

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Refurbishment & revamping

Let’s talk about the new, the industrialized countries. The industrialized countries are having
already 2/3 of their capacities already equipped.

So there is still 1/3 to be equipped. But revamping and refurbishment are one of the biggest
sources of energy that we can, we can tap without big CAPEX, without barrage, we are just
changing few parts of the machines and therefore we can get more energy and if we change
the rotating machines in the industrialized countries, all the fleets, we can tap more than
10% more power.

So just while dealing obviously, with what I said: flexibility and the odd off-design issues, now
just to give you an order of magnitude… please, I’ll ask you to do the following exercise: just
calculate the cost of 0.1 of lack of efficiency in 3 Gorges barrage. Don’t forget: 22 Gigawatts,
each machine is operating 8000 hours per year and the machines are operating for 40
years. And just a rough idea about the cost of electricity, let's say it is 5 cents per kWh.

You will be surprised !

3.2 - HYDROPOWER - Farid MAZZOUJI - page 3

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