Hydropower Development In China Research Articles

Analysis of hydropower development in China

With the environmental destruction becoming more and more serious, all the countries on earth pool their minds to solve the environmental problems. The use of carbon is one of the most serious problems causing environmental pollution. The country's rapid development leads to excessive carbon emissions. To solve this problem, the country is researching and developing new energy sources. For China, water resources are part of the solution. If reasonable development and good use of water resources, can properly relieve the pressure brought by environmental pollution. This paper summarizes China's previous hydropower generation, and puts forward some suggestions in order to improve China's hydropower technology and reduce the damage to the environment.

Influence of Cascade Hydropower Development on Water Quality in the Middle Jinsha River on the Upper Reach of the Yangtze River

In recent decades, there has been unprecedented development of hydropower in China, especially in the Yangtze River Basin, which has changed the hydrological and hydraulic conditions of natural rivers and has an impact on water quality. However, the spatial-–temporal extent, factors, and the reasons behind the influence of cascade hydropower development are not clear. The six hydropower stations on the main course of the middle reach of the Jinsha River in Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces have been in joint operation for seven years, and the impact of cascade hydropower development on water quality has begun to appear. In this paper, in order to accurately determine the causal relationship between cascade hydropower development and water quality changes on the middle reaches of the Jinsha River and their trends using regression discontinuity analysis, we collected monitoring data on water quality from 2004 to 2019. The results show that cascade hydropower development on the middle reach of the Jinsha River led to a decrease in TP concentration in that section of the river and an increase in the concentration of CODMn and NH3-N. Furthermore, increase in sedimentation following the impoundment of cascade hydropower development is the main reason for the decrease in TP concentration, and the regional economic and social development driven by cascade hydropower development are external sources of the increase in the concentration of CODMn and NH3-N. In addition, influenced by rainfall, the concentrations of CODMn and TP are higher in the rainy season and lower in the dry season, which is directly related to the input of non-point-source pollutants in the basin during the former. This study established a model to accurately judge the causal relationship between cascade hydropower development and water quality changes in the basin, which was then used to assess the impact of cascade hydropower development on water quality. Our results provide a basis for the formulation and implementation of a water quality protection plan for the middle reach of the Jinsha River and can also provide a basis for the development of cascade hydropower in other river basins.

Water-energy-ecosystem nexus modeling using multi-objective, non-linear programming in a regulated river: Exploring tradeoffs among environmental flows, cascaded small hydropower, and inter-basin water diversion projects

Small hydropower (SHP) possesses significant economic, technical, and environmental advantages, and accounts for a large proportion of hydropower development in China. However, the concentrated, cascaded, and diversion-type development of SHP has resulted in long-distance dewatering of river sections, and inter-basin water transfers have led to severe exploitation of water resources and damage to river ecosystems. In this paper, the Datong River Basin, a secondary sub-basin of the Yellow River Basin in China, was selected as the illustrative case, which includes 22 hydropower projects (HPPs) and three inter-basin water diversion projects (WDPs). A nexus system model was established that used weighted multi-objective programming to consider three main objectives: the water resources utilization (local water withdrawal and inter-basin water transfer), energy production (by cascaded HPPs), and riverine environmental conservation. The Tennant method was used to estimate the environmental flows (e-flows) at the cross-sections immediately downstream of the dam/sluice gate and immediately downstream of the hydropower plant of diversion-type HPPs. The decreased percentage of regulated flow in comparison with runoff and the guaranteed rate of e-flow at the control cross-section were introduced to assess the degree of environmental impact to the river. Using a historical series of runoff data during 1956–2016 as the model input (i.e., implicit stochastic method), the Multi-start solver of nonlinear programming of LINGO software was used to conduct optimizations and analyses for multiple scenarios (with/without e-flow, with consideration of various levels of e-flow, and with/without water resources utilization). The sectoral linkages relating to the water-energy-ecosystem (WEE) nexus were quantitatively identified. The possible influences of different boundary conditions (i.e., initial/final reservoir storage, inter-basin water diversion capacity, and climate change) on the WEE nexus were further explored. The present study aims to provide an exemplar for the optimal operation and scientific management of a complicated water resources system in a regulated river with cascaded SHP and inter-basin WDPs.

Small hydropower development in China: Growing challenges and transition strategy

With the great successes in improving rural electrification and reducing poverty, China's small hydropower (SHP) development is expected to provide a good example for other developing countries. However, recently, nearly all new SHP development plans have been halted, and many plants have been urged to shut down or even be removed. The SHP industry in China is now in a dilemma. This paper presents a review of the status of SHP development in China and explores the challenges troubling this industry. It was revealed that SHP resources in many provinces have been intensively exploited, with an exploration rate over 0.80, while untapped resources are primarily located in remote western provinces, such as ecologically fragile Tibet. This intensive and disordered SHP development has caused serious dewatering of rivers and affected local agricultural and household water access, which arouses fierce controversy. Moreover, the role of SHP has been gradually weakened by the extension of power grids and diversified electricity sources. Therefore, the transition and upgrade of the SHP industry has become critical to enhance its sustainable development and to provide a solid example for the world. A divergence management strategy for SHP should be adopted to achieve low-impact development, as opposed to blind large-scale development or rigidly discontinuing all projects. Future transition strategies are proposed in this paper that include delicate management of existing plants and construction of new plants with higher standards, as well as pathways for the development benefits to be shared by a wider range of local residents.

Sustainable development pathways of hydropower in China: Interdisciplinary qualitative analysis and scenario-based system dynamics quantitative modeling

As a low-cost, low-carbon, and clean renewable energy, hydropower is crucial to carbon emissions reduction and climate change mitigation. Compared with non-steady and highly volatile renewable energy, flexible hydropower can help secure the reliable operation of the grid. However, development cost increase, resettlement and environmental issues have recently hindered China’s hydropower development. This paper first reviews the history and current status of hydropower development in China, integrates the economy-energy-environment system, the water-energy-food nexus, and socio-hydrology theory to analyze the complex influence mechanism of hydropower development, and identifies driving factors of hydropower development through a cost-benefit analysis. Then, the quantitative system dynamics (SD) model of hydropower development is constructed based on the interdisciplinary qualitative analysis. Combining incentive policies and technological progress, four scenarios are set. The multi-scenario prediction results and sensitivity analysis results of the SD model indicate that incentive policies can enhance the attractiveness of hydropower investment and significantly promote long-term stable hydropower development, while technological progress can improve the efficiency and carbon emissions reduction benefits of hydropower. Based on the comparative analysis of these results, specific policy recommendations for promoting sustainable development of green hydropower in China are proposed in terms of four aspects: the hydropower development concept, cooperation mechanism, policy mechanism, and technological progress.

Early demonstration and research on the key technical issues of large-basin hydropower development under the concept of harmony

Abstract As a typical representative of hydropower development in China, the Dadu River is characterized by abundant water resources, poor geological conditions, many resettlements and limited environmental capacity. Therefore, the technical problems faced by Dadu River hydropower development are numerous and complex. We analysed these technical problems, such as the hydropower-development mode, normal water level, dam-site selection, damming technology, migration resettlement and environmental protection. The concept and characteristics of harmonious hydropower development are identified. The harmonious hydropower-development concept has been applied to all aspects of the Dadu River hydropower-development feasibility study to solve the key technical problems of hydropower development on the Dadu River and to promote the development of China’s hydropower.

Study of quality maintenance of fish habitats in small- and medium-sized mountain rivers with low flow rate

Many large-scale southwestern mountain rivers have intensive hydropower development in China, and it is difficult for the mainstream habitats to meet the needs of fish; thus, the replacement of tributary habitats has become an effective measure for river ecological protection. Appropriate ecological flow is an important tool used to repair fish habitats and plays an important role in the ecological protection of tributaries, but this practice has caused conflicts with the economic interests of hydropower owners, which has made the implementation of restoration work more difficult; therefore, it is imperative to ease the contradiction between the two. Based on field investigation and monitoring, this paper designs remedial measures for the horizontal and vertical sections of the river section, namely, dredging the river horizontally and constructing a water-retaining weir and underwater dam vertically. A two-dimensional hydrodynamic model was used to numerically simulate the hydrodynamic conditions before and after different ecological restoration measures, and the corresponding weighted usable area (WUA) was calculated to evaluate the different restoration effects on habitats. The results show that the suitable ecological flow rate of the study section is 16.80 m3/s (35% average annual flow), and the WUA increased by 317.37% compared with the initial state of 2.39 m3/s (5% average annual flow); when discharge flow is 4.80 m3/s (10% average annual flow), the improvement measures of habitat quality include the combination of river dredging and the construction of water-retaining weir, construction of water-retaining weir, construction of underwater dam, and river dredging. The initial state increased by 129.96%, 177.19%, 226.51% and 329.21%, respectively. The partial excavation and dredging have a complementary effect with the construction of the water trap, and the increase in the WUA caused by the combination of the two exceeds the increase caused by the appropriate ecological flow. In summary, targeted restoration measures can achieve the goal of maintaining a high level of habitat quality at lower flow levels.

Application of Situational Simulation Teaching Method in Leadership Science and Art Course

Leadership science and art is a core course in management disciplines. Its goal is to cultivate students' leadership quality and management ability, with strong practicality, flexibility and artistry. Situational simulation teaching method has changed the limitations of traditional teaching method, such as teacher-centered, students' mechanical learning and lack of participation. Through situational creation, role playing, team cooperation, peer review and teaching feedback, it can effectively improve students' initiative, sense of substitution and team consciousness, and is suitable for leading science and art course teaching. Situational simulation teaching method includes three steps: pre-class preparation, class presentation and after-class summary. This paper introduces the design and implementation process of situational simulation teaching of leadership science and art based on the case of Nujiang hydropower development in China. Feedback from teaching activities shows that situational simulation teaching helps to improve students' comprehensive quality and increase students' satisfaction. The paper points out that the teaching effect of situational teaching method depends on careful pre-class preparation, class display and after-class summary. Teachers should play the role of chief director and guide and summarize in time.

Analysis on operation reliability of hydropower units in China

With the rapid development of hydropower in China, in just a few years installed capacity has leapt to the world’s first, in addition to thermal power outside the development of the second largest electricity supply. However, the equivalent availability level of hydropower units in China is lower than that of conventional fossil energy thermal power units, and the cost of unit engineering is higher, especially the unplanned shutdown coefficient of pumped storage units in China is much higher than the world level. Therefore, it is urgent to carry out the research on the operation reliability of generator sets. Based on the analysis and summary of the basic situation, operation situation, planned outage and unplanned shutdown of hydropower units in China, this paper puts forward the main problems of reliability of hydropower units and hydroelectric power plants, which are used for reference and exchange by professional and technical personnel engaged in hydropower industry.

Development of small hydropower in China 1990–2015: Province-domain patterns of temporal-spatial evolution

At present, no quantitative method has been developed to analyze province-level data of small hydropower development in China. Knowledge of its temporal-spatial patterns can be conducive to predicting and planning for its future. For this reason, the study sets out to approach it as two problems: Development level evaluation and spatial distribution. Specifically, panel data of provinces or equivalent administrative units were used to establish an evaluation system covering the fields of economy, society, eco-environment, and resources; an evaluation model was formulated using the entropy weight technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution method and theory of coupling coordination; its trends were discovered by regression analysis; the spatial distribution model was built by clustering analysis and center of gravity analysis. Results indicate that, during the 1990–2015 period, while small hydropower developed to their respective steady-state levels, some gaps still exist in the general trend of small hydropower among provinces. The center of gravity of small hydropower development displayed a movement toward the Northwest. Based on clustering of scores in the four dimensions and coupled coordination, its spatial distributions can be divided into three zones: Highly coordinated, relatively coordinated, and uncoordinated, and its temporal patterns can be described as three stages: Rise with fluctuations, unbalanced and uncoordinated development, and steady rise. Policy suggestions are provided on this basis.

Leading-edge Technologies in Hydropower Development in China

After the implementation of the Reform and Opening-up Policy for a period of 40 years, the exploitation of China’s hydropower resources developed significantly. Through vast amounts of scientific and technological research and construction practices, China has accumulated abundant engineering experience with respect to the construction technologies required for 300-meter-high concrete arch dams, 200-meter-high roller-compacted concrete gravity dams, 200-meter-high concrete face rockfill dams, and 250-meter-high earth core rockfill dams, large-flow discharge and energy dissipation, huge underground cavern group constructions, complicated foundation treatments for high earth and rockfill dams and high and steep slope reinforcements. These series of technologies have now reached an international leading level. In the near future, these technical improvements will likely have broader application prospects and make greater contributions toward hydropower development both in China and across the world.

Accelerating Sustainability by Hydropower Development in China

China, with the biggest electricity system, now leads the world on its global share in electricity production and consumption, as well as greenhouse gas emission. However, its incomplete power system reforms left an uncoordinated development between the generator and the grid. Despite intensive investment and construction of power generation infrastructure, the lagging grid reform has become a bottleneck in the sector. The benefits of electricity sector reform, if designed and proceeded carefully, can be substantial.

Parallel chance-constrained dynamic programming for cascade hydropower system operation

With continuing development of hydropower in China, cascade hydropower system will account for more in the power grid, and may increase power grid operation risk under global climate change. This paper presents a parallel chance-constrained dynamic programming model to derive optimal operating policies for a cascade hydropower system in China. The innovation work of this paper is mainly embodied in two aspects. First, the reliabilities of meeting the firm power requirements of the cascade hydropower system and avoiding extreme system failure under extreme events are explicitly embedded in the model using Lagrangian duality theory and a penalty function. Multiple operating policies are generated by updating the values of Lagrangian multiplier and penalty coefficient for system disruption, then best operating rules are selected based on system performance and evaluated according to simulated reliability, extreme system failure, and maximum benefit. Second, the Fork/Join parallel framework is deployed to parallelize the chance-constrained dynamic programming in a multi-core environment for improving computational efficiency. Two computing platforms with contrasting configurations are employed to illustrate the parallelization performance. Results from a cascade hydropower system operation demonstrate that the proposed method is computationally efficient and can obtain satisfying operating policies, especially for extreme drought events.

1-D MOC simulation software for hydraulic transients: TOPsys

The development of hydropower in China has entered the gold period nowadays. Numerous challenging hydropower projects have been presented to researchers and scholars. In order to adapt to this trend and the need of the nation, TOPsys, an one dimensional simulation software based on the method of characteristics (MOC) for hydraulic transients, has been developed in State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, Wuhan University recently. This software has been employed for transient flow simulations of more than thirty hydropower stations in China and overseas. The whole paper is organized as follows: first, basic mathematical theory of the software was introduced. Subsequently, several typical engineering applications, including conventional power stations and pumped storage power stations, were given for validation. Finally, the versatility as well as the expandability of this software was shown with several special engineering examples.

Accelerating Sustainability by Hydropower Development in China: The Story of HydroLancang

Sustainable development is a shared responsibility. Accelerating sustainability of water–energy–people nexus and building a common awareness of issues pertaining to sustainable development are essential for any sort of success in this direction. Hydropower has been a useful sustainable energy for development, yet highly controversial. This paper reviews the overall situation of hydropower development and China’s energy reforms and policies, accompanied with a case study of hydropower development the Lancang River by the HydroLancang, aiming to illustrate the two opposite sides of hydropower development—economy and environment. The paper concludes with a neutral view of hydropower as the necessary facilitator for development. Water is a shared responsibility. Hydropower might not be the optimum solution to eliminate the tension between human demand of energy and finite natural resource and the rising pressure of climate change worldwide, but it serves well as an “Electricity Bridge” before better alternatives become available. This is a more balanced view of hydropower rather than two extreme viewpoints that present themselves: on the one hand, exaggerated claims of the human power to tame the wild river, and, on the other hand, the idealistic fantasy of preserving nature by abandoning all human activity.

Experimental Study on Constitutive Property of Cementitious Rockfill Material

With a new round of hydropower development in China, a large number of water conservancy and hydropower projects have been started, and many of them are rockfill dam. Rockfill dam and cofferdam used granular rockfill roller compaction construction, which has low cost, convenient construction, however, with the dam height increase, dam body (cofferdam) section will constantly increase, not only human, material and financial will be spent large, but also construction time will be extend, because of small friction angle and lower or none cohesion of rockfill. If we can improve the cohesion and friction angle of the rockfill, it will greatly reduce the dam section size and project cost. Although the roller compaction construction has the characteristics of convenient construction and high material strength, but as a kind of concrete materials with low water cement ratio, the colloid material proportion is still relatively large, high cost. Obviously, added only trace amounts of colloidal material without the change of construction process, that can improve the mechanical indexes of rockfill is the ideal choice. However, there is a lack of research results in effects of the rockfill filling trace amounts of colloidal material. In this paper, Study on the mechanical properties of the rockfill filling trace amounts of colloidal material has been done through large-scale triaxial shear test, to obtained forced deformation laws and constitutive model of the new material.

Hydropower system operation optimization by discrete differential dynamic programming based on orthogonal experiment design

With the fast development of hydropower in China, a group of hydropower stations has been put into operation in the past few decades and the hydropower system scale is experiencing a booming period. Hence, the “curse of dimensionality” is posing a great challenge to the optimal operation of hydropower system (OOHS) because the computational cost grows exponentially with the increasing number of plants. Discrete differential dynamic programming (DDDP) is a classical method to alleviate the dimensionality problem of dynamic programming for the OOHS, but its memory requirement and computational time still grows exponentially with the increasing number of plants. In order to improve the DDDP performance, a novel method called orthogonal discrete differential dynamic programming (ODDDP) is introduced to solve the OOHS problem. In ODDDP, orthogonal experimental design is employed to select some small but representative state combinations when constructing the corridor around the current trajectory, and then dynamic programming recursion equation is used to find an improved trajectory for the next iteration. The proposed method is applied to the optimal operation of a large-scale hydropower system in China. The results indicate that compared to the standard DDDP, ODDDP only needs about 0.37% of computing time to obtain the results with about 99.75% of generation in the hydropower system with 7 plants and 3 states per plant, providing a new effective tool for large-scale OOHS problem.

Algorithm Research Based on Distributed Water Multi-Level Resources Scheduling

With the rapid development of hydropower in China, there are a lot of reservoirs under constructions are put into operation. Therefore, resource scheduling of distributed water conservancy project has become a key focus in current researches. Based on distributed water multi-level resources, the paper put forward to apply the improved genetic algorithm to reservoir resource scheduling. In this way, water level sequence can be the basic genetic algorithm coding scheme, and storage status of reservoir can be stored with the array. Then the genetic algorithm coding can be operated based on the corresponding array index of each reservoir. The paper tries to prove the feasibility of this scheduling policy with some examples, simplifying the process of scheduling algorithm and providing guiding basis for water resource scheduling.

Ecological Footprint of Hydropower Development in China and the Associated Reductions of Greenhouse Gas Emission

Hydropower, next to coal, is the second most important source of electric power supply in China. It amounted to 20.4% of the nation's total installed capacity of electricity generation in 2011. To provide a comprehensive picture of the development of hydropower in China and its potential environmental impacts, this study calculates the ecological footprint and greenhouse gas emission reduction of hydropower development in China over the past 60 years. The ecological footprints include the energy ecological footprint and arable land occupation footprint. The energy ecological footprint is calculated in terms of the area of the land which would be used for reforestation in order to assimilate CO2 emissions from fossil energy consumption for hydropower development. The arable land occupation footprint is calculated in terms of the area of the land to be inundated by hydropower development. The calculated energy ecological footprint was 502 422 ha in 2010 or about 0.3% of total arable land in China and the calculated inundated land was about 1.42×106 ha or about 1.2% of total arable land in China. The regional power grid baseline method was used to calculate the greenhouse gas emission reduction. Results indicated that CO2 emission reduction from hydropower development was increasing rapidly since 1949 and reached 5.02×108 tons of CO2 emission in 2010, with an accumulative total of 6.221×109 tons of CO2 emission during the period 1949–2010.

Risk management of hydropower development in China

There is a rapidly increasing demand for hydropower in China. However, little research has been conducted to systematically investigate the overall aspects of hydropower development risks. With support of the data collected from a fieldwork survey, this study reports the multiple facets of hydropower development risks in China as perceived by main project participants. All groups have a common view on the criticality of safety, and the groups also have their own priorities, i.e., resettlement of migrants, incompetence of subcontractors, project delay, inadequate or incorrect design, premature failure of facilities and ecological and environmental impacts are the key risks to clients, whereas quality of work, financial related risks, reputation, and claims and disputes are the main concerns to contractors. A case study of Three Gorges Project further demonstrates that, hydropower development risks can be effectively managed by encouraging joint efforts of all participants to achieve the goals on producing renewable energy, reducing emissions of CO2, and providing important social/economical benefits. Future hydropower development should emphasize the interactions between project delivery, environmental, and economical processes to reach appropriate trade-offs among involving stakeholders, by adequately considering the inter-relations between project participants' risks as well as hydropower project's externalities on a broad view.