Hydro Power Production

Introduction to Hydro power production:

 Hydropower production refers to generation of electric power by using gravitational force of flowing or falling water which is the most widely used form of renewable energy.   Hydropower production is accounted for about 88% of electricity.  The growing need leads to the development of electricity generation through hydropower production.  In the metropolitan areas, commercial companies constructed the hydroelectric power plants at the beginning of the twentieth century.  1,345MW hydropower production became world’s largest hydroelectric power plant in 1936.  Currently, US have 2,000 hydroelectric power plants and it supplies 49% of its renewable energy sources.


Hydroelectric power production:


Methods of generation of hydro power production:

Conventional method

Pumped-storage method

Run-of-the-river method

Tide method

Production of hydropower by Run-of-the-river method:

Naturally, for the generation of electric power natural flow and elevation drop of a river are used. Projects divert some rivers flow through a pipe or through a tunnel which leads to electricity generation turbines and then return water back to the river down stream.  These Run-of-the-river projects do not require a large impoundment of water hence these hydropower production plants are called as environmentally-friendly. Recently, run-of-project was proposed in British, Colombia and Canada which has been designed to generate 1027 megawatts capacity.

Run-of-the-river hydropower production plant:

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World’s largest hydroelectric power production plants:


Country                          Annual hydroelectric power production

China                              585.2

Canada                           368.890

Brazil                              363.8

United States                   250.6

Russia                            167.0

Norway                           140.5

India                               115.6

Venezuela                       86.

 Japan                             68.20

Sweden                           64.95


Advantages of Hydropower production:


In majority of the cases, hydroelectricity is used in the elimination of cost of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.

These hydropower production plants have longer economic lives than fuel-fired generation.

Operating cost and also labor cost is low during normal operation.  These hydropower plants have relatively low construction cost.

Hydropower plants do not produce carbon dioxide directly to the nature because hydroelectric dams do not burn fossil fuels. If carbon dioxide is produced then it is in tiny fraction of the operating emissions of equivalent fossil-fuel electricity generation.

It is known as environmental-friendly because hydroelectricity produces least amount of green house gases.

Hydropower production plants provide facilities for water sports and become tourist place.

Aquaculture is also common in hydropower production plants.

These are very much useful in irrigation for agricultural purpose which provides constant water supply.

The hydropower production plants which are large can control floods.