langley.kirwin.energy.water.spring.2010

​ Hydro Power

1. What is the problem at hand? There are actually a number of environmental problems associated with hydro power. To utilize hydro power to its full potential there needs to be a dam built in the river that we want to draw the water source from. These dams that are being built are actually a large threat to the surrounding environment. There are many species that live in the areas of the dams whose lives are affected by them being put into place. With dams built in the rivers fish are no longer able to swim upstream. This is very bad for the fish who need to swim upstream to lay their eggs and repopulate, while at the same time it is bad for the bears who need fish as a food source. The hydro plants that are built can also effect the water quality which is a large area for concern with the population increasing and the amount of water slowly decreasing. The hydro plants are taking less and less of the water that we need for the future away each day. The plants kick up metals and other contaminating materials into the water. These plants can also change water temperatures and can even lower the levels of dissolved oxygen. This is even worse for the aquatic life in the area because fish can't separate oxygen from the water and they will die out, especially because not enough dissolved oxygen causes the water to get warmer which fish will not be able to live in. Once we can figure out a way to make these dams environmentally friendly the less resources we will have to use up and the more efficient we will be. Believe it or not these hydro plants are actually one of the cheapest forms of producing energy at 1 cent per kw, as opposed to nuclear plants 2 cents per kw and coal plants 4 cents per kw.

2. What is the driving force of the problem? The driving force of the problem is just that we are always in need of ways to produce energy cost efficiently and productively, and hydro power just happens to be one of the best ways to achieve those goals. Hydro power is a wonderful idea to produce a large amount of energy, and in the fragile state that our country is in right now there hasnt been much done to perfect it. Once the problems that the hydro plants have with the environment is worked out there will be no problem or driving force behind it, just clean, environmentally friendly, and efficient energy. For right now in a country thats in a recession, these hydro plants are producing energy very cheaply and thats what everyone is worrying about right now. However, it is almost worth putting in the money and research time to perfect this source of energy, because when we still need the water and aquatic life in the future when time and global warming take their course we will be thankful of the time and effort put in to save our country and environment.

3. What are people currently doing or not doing to solve the problem? There have been successful efforts in enhancement from the federal government and from project owners as stated on the hydro research foundation website. These funders include the army corps. of engineers and the Federal Energy Regulatory Comission or FERC. These two companies are the ones that license many hydroelectric companies across the whole country. The licenses are actually up for renewal in the next ten years as stated on the hydro research foundation. When they have to go through the renewal process the owners will check to see the impact that the plants are making on the environment, efficiency of the plants, what the public thinks about keeping them there, and considering other possible enhancement plans. So it will be very interesting to see how many plants will actually get there licenses renewed in the next ten years. If all or most of them get renewed then obviously the plants are becoming a little more environmentally friendly and still producing energy which proves as a very good sign for the future. However, if a lot of the licenses don't get renewed then there will be a noticable pattern of decline in research for this particular field, and things will be looking very bad for future energy saving techniques and the environment in general.



5. How does it work? Hydro power plants harness the moving water from the stream or river that they are built on and turn it into working energy through the use of a water turbine. Once the rushing water reaches the turbine and hits the blades of the turbine it produces them to slowly spin. As you can see from the picture the turbine has a generator attached to the top of it. As it says on how stuff works.com as the turbine blades turn so do magnets inside the generator. The magnets rotating past copper coils actually produce an alternating current by the moving electrons. Once this alternating current is converted into a higher voltage by a device called the transformer it can be sent to the power lines as also shown by the picture above. Once the water starts to move the energy becomes kinetic energy because it is energy in motion, and once it is sent through the powerlines it can be sent to all buisnesses, and even residential buildings like people's homes and apartments. So this is actually a very effective way to produce energy quickly because once the voltage is high enough it can be re routed to wherever it needs to go. This process takes a relatively short amount of time depending on the force of the current and how much water per second is going through the dam.

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6. What is the amount of (CO2) that it induces/prohibits? Hydro plants do not actually emit CO2 because they do not have to burn any sort of fossil fuels or oils to make it run. Most of the plant is run by the force of the current hitting the turbine and relies solely on kinetic energy to make it run. So with the remaining threat of global warming hanging over our heads, scientists have turned to hydro power and hydro plants and aksed themselves if this could be the future of clean environmentally friendly energy. The plants do not give off any greenhouse gasses and would not pose a threat to global warming but at the same time they do not prohibit CO2. These dams can actually hurt the surrounding environment because they can waste away the land around it. So the loss of some of the trees and vegetation around the hydro plants does make the CO2 level slightly higher, but the plants themselves do not produce any of this CO2. What scientists are looking into is making these dams in a way that they will not take anything away from the surrounding environment. Once these plants can be built in a way that will not hurt the environment in the area or any of the aquatic life, they will be the future of producing energy because they will be the most efficient and the cheapest way to produce our energy. CO2 + CaCO3(generation)

turns to CaCO3(sediment) which actually forms and collects on the sea bottoms.

7. What is the amount of water that it can generate or purify? Even though hydroelectric plants do not generate water and only recirculate it back into the river that it came from, they do produce a massive amount of energy. Some of the largestplants in the world right now are atually producing twenty one thousand five hundred fifteen mega watts of energy as a capacity. With new scientific developments in the future we actually hope that the capacity will increase to twenty one thousand six hundred fifteen mega watts of energy. In terms of energy and voltage these are tremendous numbers, but those are only the biggest plants. There are still slightly smaller plants that contribute a good deal to the energy that we produce. Some smaller plants can produce up to thirty mega watts, and these can actually be attatched to single homes or slightly larger scale electronic items that need a bigger power source. So even the smaller hydro plants are doing their part in producing twenty percent of the whole world's energy. Twenty percent doesn't really sound like much at first, but there are close to nine billion people on the planet. So twenty percent of the energy that is distributed to that many people is actually an enormous number, and it makes one think if hydro electric power could be focused on as the main source of energy for a good amount of the world.

8. What are the best aspects of hydroelectric power? There are many advantages and good aspects of hydroelectric power. One of the best aspects is the cost efficientness of hydroelectric power. It costs only one cent for every kilo watt that it produces. This is one of the most cost efficient methods of producing energy, better even than the other two such as coal and uranium power. In comparison coal power costs up to four cents per kilo watt and nuclear power can cost up to two cents a kilo watt. This doesn't seem like tooo much when you talk about it in the sense of pennies and kilo watts, but when plants can produce over ten thousand mega watts this can really add up. Another aspect is that right now this method is so efficient that it accounts for twenty percent of the world's energy and close to sixty percent of the world's renewable energy sources.

10. If it already makes up a lot of the world's fuel/energy supply explailn why.

Hydropower is the most widely used renewable resource on the planet but only accounts for 20% of world energy production. In some countries alone hydropower contributes from 75% of total electricity produced in New Zealand to a whopping 99% in Norway. Compared to other renewable resources such as geothermal,wind, biomass and solar energy, hydro takes the cake. Even though dams are extremely expensive to create the electricity that can be harnessed from hydro are unequaled. The best coal plants in the world can only harness an estimated 50% of the actual fuel they burn. With hydro power plants 90% of the actual electricity produced is ready to use and with no emissions. In just the U.S alone hydropower plants can produce 95,000 megawatts of electricity which can provide for more than 28 million homes. Which is the equivalent of 500 million barrels of fossel fuels burned. Countries that rely on hydropower decrease CO2 emissions and create cheaper electricity for their citizens to buy. Dams are also used for tourist attractions, so not only clean energy but energy that provides funds for maintaining itself. But the world only using hydropower for 20% of its total energy isn't enough. Fossil fuels is about 65% of the total energy, we need to increase the use of energy production that don't create global warming. Of the total U.S dams (80,000) only 1/3 (2,400) are used for hydropower. Why is that??




 * Advantages:**
 * 1) Energy produced has no CO2 emissions
 * 2) Inexpensive to create about 1 cent per kw
 * 3) 90% of energy produced can be made into electricity
 * 4) Provides tourist sites
 * 5) Recreational activities


 * Disadvantages:**
 * 1) Destroys habitats and enviroments
 * 2) Cuts off fish fro repopulating
 * 3) Destroys food/water source for most animals
 * 4) Can create sysmic activity
 * 5) Dams are very expensive to build
 * 6) Drought can effect energy output

13. YOU MUST include quotes from scientists or policy makers.

14. Explain how it could help solve some of the problems or contributes to those problems. Hydropower does destroy habitats and ecosytems that submerged in water behind the dam. There are also accounts of sysmic activity that results from the shear weight that a new lake creates. But the fact is the world has to make up its mind eventually on what we are going to use for energy. Compared to global warming, ice caps melting, CO2 emissions at ridiculous levels, and nuclear waste causing mutations, I think I'll take the loss of habitat and sysmic activity thank you.

15. Explalin what it would take to do your thing better or in a larger scale.

There is no real need to make any dams bigger than they already are. In fact scientists are researching smaller versios of dams that could be fitted to produce electricity for communities. Smaller dams would be less detrementle to the environment and animal's habitats. Also there are other ways to produce hydro-electric power such as tidal waves. Scientists are constantly redesigning different mechnanism that could potentialy be used in the future. Some othe types of hydropower is an Attenuator wave energy converter. This is designed to float on the actual surface of the ocean water and uses the natural flow of a wave to produce elctricity. This wave converter is still having problems resolved but could be a possibility in the future.



Another design that scientist came up was the Tidal Turbine which is actually mounted to the sea floor. In most places in the ocean strong currents run close to the sea floor and scienctists want to harness that energy. By using the force of currents the turbine would be able to rotate almost like a wind mill except under water. There is a lot of controversy about the effects it could have on the marine life if there were underwater farms. But at the rate the world is going today this would be the least to worry about.

16. Explain who uses that technology and why. If it isn't used very much explain that instead. As of today many countries rely on hydropower to produce a proportion of it's energy. The advantages simply outway the disadvantages. The cost of producing the electicity from hydropower is simply unmatched when compared to other costly energ sources. Cheap, clean, and reliable what country wouldn't use it? The largest hydroelectric country is Canada which makes perfect sense since almost the entire country is covered in lakes, rivers and forests. So basically every country out there has some form of hydroelectric generator because of its inexpensiveness and clean output.

17. After learning about it what would you do next to change how its used? why? Using just Hydropower to solve this energy crisis simply won't work. The world needs to realize that depending heavily on one source of energy will just lead to mre problems. Yes we do need to increase the use of hydropower that's a plain fact. But we have to increase our use of renewable resources in every way posssible. So that our oceans aren't filled with turbines,or our beaches blocked by windmills, or the air we breathe consumed by toxins. If the world can begin the transition of relying on more renwable resources we can cut back on fossil fuels. Our observations we made while studyng this paricular resorce is that the world is getting bigger and its resources are diminishing considerably every year. If we don't take the time and effort to expand/enchance the renewable resources (hydropower) we are going to find ourselves in

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