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Since small hydro projects usually have minimal reservoirs and civil construction work, they are seen as having a relatively low environmental impact compared to large hydro. This decreased environmental impact depends strongly on the balance between stream flow and power production. [citation needed]
Hydropower is a method of sustainable energy production. Hydropower is now used principally for hydroelectric power generation, and is also applied as one half of an energy storage system known as pumped-storage hydroelectricity.
By damming a river, the head is available to generate power at the face of the dam. A dam may create a reservoir hundreds of kilometres long, but in run-of-the-river the head is usually delivered by a canal, pipe or tunnel constructed upstream of the power house. The cost of upstream construction makes a steep drop desirable, such as falls or ...
The dam, which will be located in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo river, could generate three times more energy than the Three Gorges Dam, currently the world's largest hydropower plant.
The Rusumo Hydroelectric Power Station (Kinyarwanda: Urugomero rw'amashanyarazi rwa Rusumo, French: Centrale hydroélectrique de Rusumo), also known as the Rusumo Power Station, is an operational hydropower plant, with initial capacity installation of 80 megawatts (110,000 hp). The project involved the construction of a dam, with run of river ...
The Grand Coulee Dam in the United States was expanded with a pump-back system in 1973. [78] Existing dams may be repowered with reversing turbines thereby extending the length of time the plant can operate at capacity. Optionally a pump back powerhouse such as the Russell Dam (1992) may be added to a dam for increased generating capacity ...
However, as the need for power generation increased small hydropower projects were phased out in favor of the large scale dams using newly designed turbines. [ 16 ] Post 20th century environmental doctrine is moving away from large-scale hydropower construction due to the increased awareness of ecological problems associated with dams.
In the 1930s, the need for power in the Southwest led to the building of the largest concrete construction in the world at that time, the Hoover Dam. The Grand Coulee Dam was both a power and irrigation project of the 1930s that was expanded for military industrial reasons during World War II , which also saw other dams such as the TVA's ...