Novel Developments for Sustainable Hydropower

Abstract

Hydropower is probably the oldest source of energy in the world with roots going back to the 1st to 2nd millennium B.C., when the power of water was known and mechanically used by the advanced civilisations of ancient China, Egypt and Mesopotamia. The first inventions that converted mechanical energy into electrical energy by means of reaction turbines date back to the eighteenth century. Around the beginning of the twentieth cen- tury, turbines such as Kaplan, Francis and Pelton, generated electricity with already very high efficiency. Most of the inventions in hydropower come from Europe, and even today, Europe supplies the largest share (approximately two-thirds) of hydropower equipment to the world. Electrical energy is one of the prerequisites for industrialisation, which in many countries enabled agricultural societies to develop into modern industrial nations. For many years, society used electricity from hydropower uncritically because the economic advantages of hydropower were considered unbeatable. Hydropower plants and their components, such as turbines, were optimised for profit. The environmental adverse effects of the technology were not of great concern to the society of that time. Since hydropower plants are long-lived—50–100 years—today’s society is confronted with old plants whose adverse effects on the environment are now better understood and also critically addressed. However, mitigation of the negative impacts of existing plants is much more difficult than considering appropriate mitigation strategies in the design and planning of new power plants.