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The Three Gorges Dam in China; the hydroelectric dam is the world's largest power station by installed capacity. A hydropower resource can be evaluated by its available power. Power is a function of the hydraulic head and volumetric flow rate. The head is the energy per unit weight (or unit mass) of water. [5]
Hoover Dam's initial 1,345 MW power station was the world's largest hydroelectric power station in 1936; it was eclipsed by the 6,809 MW Grand Coulee Dam in 1942. [20] The Itaipu Dam opened in 1984 in South America as the largest, producing 14 GW , but was surpassed in 2008 by the Three Gorges Dam in China at 22.5 GW .
The overall education improves in these areas as well as healthcare. Dams that run on hydro powered engines create lakes that attract tourists and boosts the economy in those areas. Such as the Hoover Dam which attracts 7 million tourists every year. The advantages of using hydro power and controlling water flow also has irrigation benefits.
Hydropower dams in the Mekong River, the world's 10th largest, is reducing fish stocks and causing the erosion of river banks — developments that threaten the livelihoods of some 60 million people.
[34] [page needed] At a dam in Brazil, where the flooded basin is wide and the biomass volume is high the methane produced results in a pollution potential 3.5 times more than an oil-fired power plant would be. [35] A theoretical study has indicated that globally hydroelectric reservoirs may emit 104 million metric tonnes of methane gas ...
In 2015 hydropower generated 16.6% of the worlds total electricity and 70% of all renewable electricity. [46] The major advantage of conventional hydroelectric systems with reservoirs is their ability to store potential power for later production on demand. When used in conjunction with intermittent sources like wind and solar, a constant ...
Most current hydroelectric projects use a large hydraulic head to power turbines to generate electricity. The hydraulic head either occurs naturally, such as a waterfall, or is created by constructing a dam in a river valley, creating a reservoir. Using a controlled release of water from the reservoir drives the turbines.
Some water turbines are designed for pumped-storage hydroelectricity. They can reverse flow and operate as a pump [1] to fill a high reservoir during off-peak electrical hours, and then revert to a water turbine for power generation during peak electrical demand. This type of turbine is usually a Deriaz or Francis turbine in design.