How To Make Electricity With Water

Hydropower is energy in moving water

People take a long history of using the forcefulness of h2o flowing in streams and rivers to produce mechanical free energy. Hydropower was one of the first sources of energy used for electricity generation, and until 2019, hydropower was the largest source of total almanac U.Southward. renewable electricity generation.

In 2021, hydroelectricity deemed for about 6.iii% of total U.S. utility-scale¹ electricity generation and 31.5% of total utility-scale renewable electricity generation. Hydroelectricity'due south share of total U.S. electricity generation has decreased over time, mainly because of increases in electricity generation from other sources.

Hydropower relies on the h2o cycle

Solar energy heats water on the surface of rivers, lakes, and oceans, which causes the h2o to evaporate.
Water vapor condenses into clouds and falls as precipitation—rain and snow.
Precipitation collects in streams and rivers, which empty into oceans and lakes, where it evaporates and begins the bicycle again.

The amount of precipitation that drains into rivers and streams in a geographic surface area determines the amount of h2o available for producing hydropower. Seasonal variations in precipitation and long-term changes in precipitation patterns, such as droughts, tin have large effects on the availability of hydropower production.

Image of the water cycle. Solar energy heats water on the surface, causing it to evaporate. This water vapor condenses into clouds and falls back onto the surface as precipitation. The water flows through rivers back into the oceans, where it can evaporate and begin the cycle over again.

Source: Adjusted from National Energy Instruction Development Projection (public domain)

Image of how a hydropower plant works. The water flows from behind the dam through penstocks, turns the turbines, and causes the generators to generate electricity. The electricity is carried to users by a transmission line. Other water flows from behind the dam over spillways and into the river below.

Source: Tennessee Valley Authority (public domain)

Hydroelectric power is produced with moving water

Because the source of hydroelectric power is water, hydroelectric power plants are normally located on or nigh a water source. The book of the water flow and the change in elevation—or fall, and often referred to as head—from ane bespeak to another determine the corporeality of available energy in moving water. In full general, the greater the water flow and the higher the head, the more electricity a hydropower plant tin can produce.

At hydropower plants h2o flows through a pipe, or penstock, then pushes against and turns blades in a turbine to spin a generator to produce electricity.

Conventional hydroelectric facilities include:

Run-of-the-river systems, where the strength of the river'due south current applies force per unit area on a turbine. The facilities may have a weir in the water course to divert h2o catamenia to hydro turbines.
Storage systems, where water accumulates in reservoirs created by dams on streams and rivers and is released through hydro turbines equally needed to generate electricity. Most U.Southward. hydropower facilities have dams and storage reservoirs.

Pumped-storage hydropower facilities are a blazon of hydroelectric storage system where water is pumped from a water source up to a storage reservoir at a higher elevation and is released from the upper reservoir to power hydro turbines located beneath the upper reservoir. The electricity for pumping may be supplied by hydro turbines or by other types of power plants including fossil fuel or nuclear ability plants. They usually pump water to storage when electricity demand and generation costs, and/or when wholesale electricity prices are relatively low and release the stored h2o to generate electricity during summit electricity demand periods when wholesale electricity prices are relatively high. Pumped-storage hydroelectric systems more often than not use more electricity to pump h2o to the upper water storage reservoirs than they produce with the stored h2o. Therefore, pumped-storage facilities have net negative electricity generation balances. The U.S. Free energy Information Administration publishes electricity generation from pumped storage hydroelectric ability plants equally negative generation.

History of hydropower

Hydropower is ane of the oldest sources of energy for producing mechanical and electrical energy and upwards until 2019, it was the largest source of full annual U.S. renewable electricity generation. Thousands of years ago, people used hydropower to turn paddle wheels on rivers to grind grain. Before steam ability and electricity were available in the Usa, grain and lumber mills were powered directly with hydropower. The first industrial use of hydropower to generate electricity in the U.s.a. was in 1880 to power 16 castor-arc lamps at the Wolverine Chair Factory in 1000 Rapids, Michigan. The first U.South. hydroelectric power plant to sell electricity opened on the Pull a fast one on River near Appleton, Wisconsin, on September 30, 1882.

There are about one,450 conventional and 40 pumped-storage hydropower plants operating in the United states. The oldest operating U.S. hydropower facility is the Whiting plant in Whiting, Wisconsin, which started performance in 1891 and has a total generation capacity of about 4 megawatts (MW). Most U.South. hydroelectricity is produced at large dams on major rivers, and most of these hydroelectric dams were congenital before the mid-1970s by federal government agencies. The largest U.S. hydropower facility, and the largest U.S. electrical power plant in electric generation chapters, is the Grand Coulee hydro dam on the Columbia River in Washington with 6,765 MW total generation chapters.

Last updated: March 16, 2022

Source: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/hydropower/

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