Hydropower

Niagara

Welcome to Hydropower: The Energy Efficiency Podcast – episode 10, the podcast that brings you a mix of energy efficiency news, products and tips all year round. We’re interested in profiling people and products involved in promoting energy efficiency habits, products and information, so please do get in touch if you have something to contribute.

This week: hydropower – is it really as green as it seems? Energy efficiency in tourism – how can we travel without harming the places we want to see? And starting our look at different types of insulation, we ask what is Kingspan?

But before we get on with our advertised features, this week website Solar Power Portal reported that the National Grid is using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve solar forecasting by a third. Poor forecasting can result in power system instability and higher operating costs. In some countries, for instance Australia, power generators are penalised for providing inaccurate forecasts. Improved forecasts help the National Grid and similar organisations worldwide run their systems more efficiently and economically. As renewables form an increasing chunk of our energy mix, this facility becomes ever more important.

The National Grid is working with the Alan Turning Institute on this project. Named after the pioneering mathematician, computer scientist, philosopher and Bletchley Park code-breaker, the Alan Turning Institute conducts research into AI. The project is funded by the Ofgem Network Innovation Allowance.

In this case, AI helps by churning through many more variables than the National Grid has historically been able to do. The results are combined with other machine learning techniques to come up with a more accurate forecast. In Colorado, USA, an AI project focusses on wind power. The system draws information from satellite reports, weather stations and wind farms. Algorithms identify patterns from the data and make predictions based on them. The British project also includes wind data. Today though the AI won’t have to work very hard to forecast that as it’s cloudy and damp, solar is providing just 9% of our power.

Hydropower

The Three Gorges Dam, China

We had already planned to cover hydro power this week before Toddbrook reservoir at Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire began to show signs of strain. There are nearly 3000 dams in England, Wales and Scotland. They’re for drinking water, canal management and so on, but some are part of hydro-electric schemes. Worldwide, dams are commonly part of hydro-electric energy generation. The Three Gorges Dam in China is the largest in the world. While hydroelectric power is viewed as a low carbon means of economic development, building dams is controversial environmentally.

Environmental cost

Fish ladder at Pitlochry

As we looked at last week with wind power, there is an environmental cost to building hydroelectric power stations. Concrete is a big environmental bad boy. The only mitigating factor is that across the lifetime of a hydro plant the emissions will be offset by emissions-free electricity. At the moment the five largest power stations in the world are hydroelectric power station with dams.

Apart from the emissions associated with building dams, they interrupt the local ecology and emit greenhouse gases. Fish migration can be badly affected but this can be improved by fitting fish ladders. Research in America has led to the development of turbines that fill or injure far fewer fish. Dams affect local agriculture by diverting and storing water and affecting water chemistry and silt formation. A recent report described the human costs of large dams as “routinely underestimated”. Communities can be displaced when fishing and agriculture are affected, and land is taken for building dams and reservoirs.

Smaller plants

Water wheel

Recognising these negatives, the EU encourages the use of smaller hydro plants that don’t use dams and is funding