For decades large-scale hydropower developments have been viewed as
something of a pariah within the renewable energy sector. Indeed,
despite an acknowledged contribution to sustainable energy development
hydropower’s global kWh contribution dwarfs all other renewable
technologies — it has largely been excluded from considerations that
benefit other forms of renewable power generation and has weathered
widespread criticism over projects deemed unsustainable.
All that is changing though, and today the prospects for
large-scale hydropower development look better than they have for
decades. According to the latest figures available from the
International Hydropower Association (IHA), some 30 GW of new hydropower
capacity were commissioned in 2012, including about 2 GW of pumped
storage. Naturally this scale of development has been accompanied with
significant investment in all regions, notably South America, Asia and
Africa.
On the back of these figures the IHA identifies three clear trends
that are expected to see both investment and development growth for the
hydropower sector in the coming years. Top of the list is the continued drive for regional development where
the increasing demand for secure supplies of both power and water
places hydropower in the sweet spot for international collaboration
designed to manage water and develop power systems across national
boundaries. As a result, hydropower is both supporting and benefitting
from a general trend of building transmission lines between countries
and the pooling of power across borders.
An example comes from Central America and its Electrical
Interconnection System (SIEPAC) project connecting the countries of
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama with
an 1800-km transmission line. The region has significant hydropower
potential but large scale investment and development has been hampered
by the small size of the individual local markets. With an investment of
US$405 million, funded primarily by loans from the Inter-American
Development Bank, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration and
Corporación Andina de Fomento, the SIEPAC development opens up
opportunities to trade both regionally and into the large markets of
neighbouring Columbia and Mexico.
The 300-MW interconnector was fully commissioned mid-2013 and has
accompanied a wave of hydropower development. For instance statistics
provided by Panama's Empresa de Transmision Electrica S.A. show the
country's installed hydro capacity grew by more than 13 percent in 2012,
some 282 MW of additional power. The increase, in the context of
Panama's 2.43 GW of total installed capacity, is attributed to a number
of new run-of-river hydropower projects that came online or received
upgrades. Included in that figure are the 5.35-MW El Fraile, 25.8-MW Gualaca,
33.8-MW Lorena, 56.8-MW Bajo de Mina, 88.2-MW Baitun, 13.1-MW
Hidropiedra and 58.7-MW Prudencia projects.
Another regional example, though on a significantly larger scale,
comes from the 2375-km Rio Madeira transmission project in Brazil.
Claimed as the longest power transmission lines in the world, it is
connecting 6,450 MW of hydropower projects in Porto Velho region of the
Amazon — the Santo Antônio and Jirau Dams on the Madeira River — to the
large heavily populated cities of the south. Due for final completion
this year, this 7,100-MW, 600 kV HVDC line began commercial operations
in the middle of 2013 and in the December, Alstom won a contract to
supply additional generation equipment to Santo Antonio, bringing the
entire plant to 3,568 MW. This new part of the project will be concluded
in December 2016, Alstom says.
The Rio Madeira transmission project is the longest power transmission line in the world. Credit: ABB.
New Investment in Hydro
Africa is also benefitting from this type of trans-national
infrastructure investment. In the country’s largest private sector
investment to date, 2012 saw the commissioning of Uganda’s 250-MW
Bujagali hydro station, which meant electricity production exceeded
demand for the first time. Subsequently, in mid-2013, the country signed a deal with China’s
Sino-Hydro Group Ltd for the construction of the $1.65 billion Karuna
hydropower project on the White Nile. This 600-MW installation is backed
by Chinese credit worth a reported 15 percent of the total cost. In September 2013 Uganda's President, Yoweri Museveni, launched construction of Karuma, which is due for completion in 2018.
The U.S. is also reportedly getting in on the action, considering
financing some of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s $12 billion Inga 3
hydropower project. According to an interview with Bloomberg, Rajiv
Shah, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development,
reportedly said, the U.S. may add the project to a $7 billion U.S.
government energy program known as Power Africa. Along with these types of trans-national investment deals supporting
large-scale development opportunities that were previously out of reach,
private sector investment is also seeing growth. This development has often been accompanied by renewable energy support policies.
Future Trends
With interest and investment in hydro picking up, investment in
technology research and development has followed suit. Of particular
note is the increased investment in tidal and marine kinetic
technologies, environmentally benign and fish friendly architecture and
pumped storage. IHA estimates that some 516 MW of tidal and ocean hydropower was
installed by the end of 2012, with a pipeline of at least 3 GW in the
longer term. Variable speed pumped storage turbines have also been a particular
focus in light of their role in supporting variable output renewable
energy technologies such as wind and solar. For instance a paper published recently by Stanford University
researchers examined the cost effectiveness of energy storage systems,
finding that pumped-storage hydropower offers not only one of the
highest ratios in terms of "Energy Stored on Invested" of any storage
system examined, but also provides a number of ancillary benefits that
make it an attractive means of capturing excess energy.
This agreeable operational profile has already seen a number of
pumped storage installations being upgraded to variable speed, such as
the 485-MW Le Cheylas plant in France, and there remain further
opportunities in Europe and elsewhere. It’s certainly wrong to suggest that hydropower development presents
nothing but opportunity, realising its incredible global potential means
surmounting some major challenges. Nonetheless, these broad trends
suggest that, sustainably developed, hydropower’s innate opportunities
for clean energy and water management, grid stability and storage mean
that its recent period of significant growth will continue into 2014 and
beyond.
credit: Renewableenergyworld
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