12 - Hydro power plants

Abstract

Hydropower is a renewable energy source that comes from water cycle. The energy required by the water cycle comes from sun that evaporates water and makes wind. Hydropower plants can exist as impoundment, diversion, pump storage, and flow in pipe. In all of these hydropower plants, a turbine must be used to capture the power in water. Hydro turbines exist in different types of impulse and reaction. The common types of impulse turbines are Pelton and cross-flow. The reaction turbines also exist as propeller, Francis, Kaplan, and kinetic turbines. Hydropower is an essential source of carbon saving to reach the Net Zero Emission (NZE) by 2050 scenario. In the NZE report released in 2021, International Energy Agency (IEA) called for the global hydropower capacity to double by 2050 to keep global temperature rising below 1.5°C. In other words, in the next 30 years, hydropower plants should be launched as much as in the last 100 years, which is equivalent to 1300GW.