Support for low-carbon energy and opposition to new large dams encourages global development of small hydropower facilities. This support is manifested in national and international energy and development policies designed to incentivize growth in the small hydropower sector while curtailing large dam construction. However, the preference of small to large dams assumes, without justification, t...

Renewable energy is an important topic in China as the country experiences increased wealth and energy demand. Historically, hydropower has been a valuable source of renewable energy production in China, and will continue to be as the Chinese increase hydroelectric facilities by 2020. Using provincial level data from 1980-2010, this paper estimates the relationship between the percentage of hyd...

Currently, hydropower accounts for close to 16% of the world’s total power supply and is the world’s most dominant (86%) source of renewable electrical energy. The key resource for hydropower generation is runoff, which is dependent on precipitation. The future global climate is uncertain and thus poses some risk for the hydropower generation sector. The crucial question and challenge then is w...

Land tenure issues such as tenure forms and its allocation and land acquisition procedure are not extensively considered in hydropower development. As a result hydropower projects are not sustainable. The main aim of the study is to find the role of land tenure in hydropower development. Desk study is carried out and is followed by the scientific literature review. The study reveals that the co...

With dramatic cost declines and performance improvements, both mini-hydropower and solar photovoltaics (PV) now serve as core options to meet the growing demand for electricity in underserved regions worldwide. We compare the net energy return on energy invested (EROI) of mini-hydropower and solar electricity using five existing mini-hydropower installations in northern Thailand with gridconnec...

1 Recent droughts and heatwaves showed the vulnerability of the electricity sector to surface water 2 constraints with reduced potentials for thermoelectric power and hydropower generation in different 3 regions. Here we use a global hydrological-electricity modelling framework to quantify the impacts of 4 recent drought and warm years on hydropower and thermoelectric power usable capacity worl...

[1] This paper presents a novel approach for modeling high-elevation hydropower systems. Conservation of energy and energy flows (rather than water volume or mass flows) is used as the basis for modeling more than 135 high-elevation high-head hydropower sites throughout California. The unusual energy basis for reservoir modeling allows for development of hydropower operations models for a large...

The concept of green hydropower needs an evaluation procedure for the ecological upgrading of hydropower plants based on scientific criteria [1]. For the planning and evaluation of riverrestoration programs, concepts like “ecosystem integrity” or “river health” have been proposed and empirically tested. Computer programs have been developed, which allow the testing of alternative restoration co...

background: several reservoir systems have been constructed for hydropower generation around the world. hydropower offers an economical source of electricity with reduce carbon emissions. therefore, it is such a clean and renewable source of energy. reservoirs that generate hydropower are typically operated with the goal of maximizing energy revenue. yet, reservoir systems are inefficiently ope...