Hydraulic or Hydropower

""During the past two decades, in particular the past decade, there has been a rapid rate of development of hydropower in China. It is foreseeable that the same rate of development will be maintained in the next decade. The total installed generation capacity of hydropower in China has now surpassed 200GW and ranks first in the world. The unprecedented rate of expansion, development scale, emergence of large number of hydro plants with high head and huge capacity, and electric power transmission have led to significant changes in management and operation of large-scale hydropower systems which have become one of significant factors in constraining the security and economic operation of power grid in China. This article gives an overview of the China’s hydropower, analyzes the new challenges that it faces, highlights the key scientific and technological issues that need to be solved, and pinpoints that the solution of these problems will be the key to the realization of energy saving and emission reduction by China in 2020.

Keywords: Large-scale; Optimal operation; Optimal operation"

Generally, low flow in rivers occur as a result of extended period of dryness which is likely attributed to drought. Drought is a natural occurrence as an outcome of reduction in precipitation in a region for a long time. Hence, low flow is a growing concern as there are possibilities of more reduced flows in rivers. However, reservoirs can be utilized to mitigate negative effects on the supply of water in dry periods and supply water for other purposes. This study aims at verifying how the low flow condition of Glomma River in Norway has been progressively sustained by hydropower reservoirs. Water Evaluation and Planning Systems (WEAP) software was used for modelling the natural streamflow condition of Glomma River, which is the longest river in Norway, using two unregulated sub-basins within the Glomma catchment. Findings from this study presents that the period between January and March are critical periods in Glomma River. Results show that the values the annual minimum low flow gotten from the three gauges suggest the flow after regulation has increased significantly as opposed to before regulation. The daily average flow is simulated by WEAP to be an average of 100 m 3 /s during the low flow periods and an average discharge of 350 m 3 /s during the summer. However, the result indicates that the flow in the summer has reduced by 80% in majority of the years. In addition, Nash Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) for the two sub basins used for this study was 0.9 and 0.76, respectively. Also, the calculation of the coefficient of determination (R 2) resulted in 0.85 and 0.78 respectively for the two sub basins. In particular, findings from this study presents evidence on the low flow condition in Glomma River prior to its regulation and how the regulation has sustained the flow.

Carbon credit is granted to hydroelectric dams under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the assumptions that (1) the dams would not be built without CDM funding and (2) over the 7 to 10-year duration of the projects the dams would have minimal emissions as compared to the fossil fuel-generated electricity they displace. Both of these assumptions are false, especially in the case of tropical dams such as those planned in Amazonia. Brazil’s Teles Pires Dam, now under construction, provides a concrete example indicating the need for reform of CDM regulations by eliminating credit for hydroelectric dams.

This paper investigates the necessary-impossible paradox facing hydropower decision-makers of the Mekong River Commission: that aspiring towards a holistic risk assessment is both socially useful and necessary, but also meaningless and impossible (because the future remains unknown). The thesis here is that to come to terms with this paradox, a Luhmannian inspired relational model offers superior analytical tools compared with an Aristotelian essential-ist approach. This is because where the latter typically employs integrative approaches which attempt to show why through rational reasoning risk assessments are holistic, the former takes into account that holistic risk assessments are contingent on the observer, on an organisation's position within a network, and on the 'temporal atoms' that mark the 'time' of social systems. By employing a relational framework comprised of variation, selection and retention to capture this comparative sociology of the observer, the contribution here offers a radical reformulation of holism in hydropower decision-making. KEYWORDS downstream response to imposed to flow transition, holism, hydropower decision-making, impact risk assessments, Mekong River commission, paradoxes, social systems, temporality

This article describes an attempt to collaborate by a major hydropower firm in Laos with an activist NGO that had forced the company to deal with the environmental problems it had caused. The collaboration demonstrates activists’ destructuring effects on hydropower development institutions over the past three decades through a case study that can be examined in detail. Against the threat of greenwashing or other forms of sustainability communication, the attempt to forge a way to neutrally evaluate environmental claims both was doomed to fail and simply replicated, rather than resolved, the institutional conditions of contested hydropower. I argue that activists have denaturalized expert knowledge through systematic denial of authoritative expertise, while in turn creating the condition for sustainability enclaves that can take root wherever contestation makes its mark. This view comes from attention paid to risk management and its close relation to media, including durable environmental relations that function as ‘new media’ crucial for transnational activist networks.

With huge hydropower plants, such as Xiluodu, Xiangjiba, Nuozhadu and Jingping located in the watershed of Jinshajiang, Yalongjiang and Lancangjiang being completed and put into commission, hydropower transmission capacity in China is expanded rapidly. Large-scale hydropower transmission has a direct impact on the rational allocation of electricity resources in national scale, especially on the compromise between absorbing hydropower for sending end power grids and shaving peak load for receiving end power grids. However, owing to the limited regulation and absorption capacity of sending end hydropower plants, existing transmission schedules of hydropower in China are based on own operating requirements or surplus electricity of the sending end power grids. Thus it is vulnerable to " straight line " or " opposite peak shaving " transmission schedules which in turn aggravate pressure to peak shaving load in receiving end power grids. This is in opposite to the absorption and quality peak regulation capability of large-scale hydropower. A new challenge for the coordinating operations is how to utilize load peak and valley difference and the characteristics of different power sources to absorb surplus hydropower from supplying power grids and to shave peak load for receiving power grids, so as to exhibit the complementary roles of inter-basin cascade hydropower stations. The problem involves optimization scheduling methods, compensation mechanism, peak thresholds and coordination strategy among regional power grids, province power grids and plants. The key of the problem is to solve the existing large-scale Ultra High Voltage Alternate Current (UHVAC)/ Ultra High Voltage Direct Current (UHVDC) hydropower absorption in China. The purposes are to allocate power resources more rationally, alleviate the pressure of the receiving end power grid from peak shaving, improve the power source structures of Yangtze Delta and Pearl River Delta, reduce the haze pressure in these areas, and effectively safeguard the safety, economy and environmental protection, reliable operation of power grids in China

Dwindling amounts of fossil fuels, climate change, environmental impacts of energy production and consumption and other energy-related issues play an increasingly important role in shaping the human and physical landscape of modernisation and development. More than a mere technical and economic challenge, these issues ask for a multidisciplinary approach that can connect energy production and energy consumption practices on different scales. This paper is an attempt to develop an approach to study energy transitions, based on the political ecology and energy practices literatures. The paper starts off from an empirical case study of a rural village Mae Kampong in Thailand. Rather than taking a high level approach, the starting points are the individual village history and its local energy practices. This village has moved stepwise from no access to electricity at all, to having its own micro-hydropower generators, and finally to a dual system of both hydropower and electricity from the national grid. By progressively contextualising these changes, a link can be made between the local energy trajectory and the shift to modern energy practices and the closing rural-urban divide; the marginalisation of micro-hydropower in Thailand; and debates about centralised versus decentralised forms of electricity production worldwide. This paper concludes that there is a need for more study on changing energy practices and politics on different scales. Furthermore, it highlights the role of the social sciences to develop novel methodologies to understand the complexities of the transition towards more sustainable energy systems.

The renewable generation is one of the fast growing power system .Whereas the world is facing the challenge of effectively exploiting and utilizing renewable energy resources, not only to meet the increasing energy demand, but also to preserve and to reduce the depletion of fossil fuels and to lessen the amount of CO2 emissions in our atmosphere .The national energy generation resources of every country plays an important role in the development. The energy transition is well underway in most European countries. It has a growing impact on electric power systems as it dramatically modifies the way electricity is produced. In this paper, our focus is to perform a systematic review of hydropower resource potential around the Globe. In this study we will address three research queries: 1) what is the existing status of hydropower resource potential around the globe? 2) What kind of methodologies frameworks and approaches are used for exploiting and utilizing renewable energy resources 3) What are the limitations of exploiting renewable resource potentials. The purpose of the study is to highlight the current research issues, to provide valid solutions to these issues and to find out the limitations of existing work in this area of hydropower resource potential. This will be done by performing quantitative literature analysis of different databases and all the results will be gathered by analysing the statistical data using "SPSS". Remedial techniques for handling the limitation of usability engineering management will be planned in future.

Hydroelectric power plants were built in the 19th and 20th century, designed by famous architects, and most of them are still functional. Their importance as industrial heritage derives from their technological and architectural features, and from their landscape location. In each Italian Alpine valley many plants have been built within a few kilometres, forming a repertoire of industrial archaeology and eclectic and modern architecture. The proximity between the various complexes stimulates their valorisation as emerging elements of a tourist route constituted by the ways and waterways that innervate each valley. The interventions of conservation and valorisation must follow a sustainable approach that should not destroy the memory of industrial heritage, and must create accessible and safe itineraries between and inside the plants.

This paper discusses the surge of export-oriented large hydropower projects in Laos in the context of the green economy. It starts off with an overview of rural electrification in Laos and figures about the hydropower boom. While there were 85 hydropower projects in some stage of development in 2011, around 30% of the Lao population still does not have access to electricity. The paper then discusses the stakeholders involved in the hydropower sector, which shows that the almost all developers, financiers, and consultancy companies are foreign, as well as the designated markets for the electricity produced. Finally, the benefits, costs, and equity implications of large hydropower projects in Laos are discussed. While the economic benefits are generally large, the social and environmental costs are also large, as well as unpredictable in the long run and disproportionally affecting people in rural areas. The paper concludes that hydropower in Laos in its current form is not an example of a ‘green economy’ activity as long as it does not address the inherent shortcomings of a ‘green’ neoliberal economic approach to energy development. Furthermore, there are many forms of renewable energy possible in Laos that would better fit the label ‘green economy’ and could lead to more sustainable developments.

Dwindling amounts of fossil fuels, climate change, environmental impacts of energy production and consumption, and other energy-related issues play an increasingly important role in shaping the human and physical landscape of modernisation and development in Southeast Asia. More than a mere technical and economic challenge, these issues ask for a multidisciplinary approach that can connect energy production as well as energy consumption practices. This paper is an attempt to start building such an approach to study the energy transitions in Southeast Asia. The paper starts off from an atypical empirical case study in Thailand, Mae Kampong. This village has moved stepwise from no access to electricity at all, to its on micro-hydropower generator, and finally to a dual system of hydropower and electricity from the grid. By progressively contextualising these changes, a connection can be made with the marginalisation of micro-hydropower in Thailand, centralised versus decentralised electricity production, and converging conventions of modern energy practices. This approach shows that energy transitions cannot be understood as purely local or national processes but are in fact assemblages connected in time and space.