Small hydropower is poised to undergo a global boom, potentially accounting for as much as 75% of new hydroelectric installations over the next two decades. There are extensive bodies of literature arguing both that small hydropower is an environmentally benign technology benefitting rural communities, and, conversely, that unchecked small hydro development is a potential environmental calamity with dire consequences for rivers and those who depend upon them. Despite this debate, few studies have considered the ways in which small hydropower is socially constructed in the sites targeted for its development. This paper focuses on the Bobos-Nautla River Basin, in the Sierra Madre Oriental of Mexico, where numerous small hydropower projects are planned. The central argument is that the dominant framing of small hydropower in Mexico focuses on claimed benefits of 'clean' energy, sidelining any consideration of impacts on water resources and local environments. However, even if this narrative has dominated policy-making, it is being actively contested by a social movement that constructs these projects as water theft. The narratives surrounding small hydropower are reconstructed from interviews with government officials, activists, NGO workers and residents of communities near project sites conducted during ten weeks of fieldwork in 2014. The results of this fieldwork are contextualised by an overview of evolving trends in hydropower governance globally that situates the boom in small hydro within shifting relationships between states, international financial institutions, and private finance, as well as an historical account of the evolution of hydropower governance in Mexico that speaks to long-standing conflicts over water use for hydroelectric generation.

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Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The world is increasingly being faced with the challenge of effectively exploiting available renewable energy resources, not only to meet an ever growing energy demand, but also to preserve the available amount of fossil fuels and to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions released into the atmosphere by fossil fuelled power stations. Hence, every available renewable energy resource, even small rivers has a contribution to make in the attempt to reduce the amount of fossil fuel generated electricity. The focus of this study is the design and installation of a low cost grid-connected 10 kW micro hydro power system (MHPS). The process to determine the potential of the available water resource is first to be presented. The environmental aspects of these systems, based on the study that is undertaken for the implementation of the landmark example, are discussed. The complete design of a micro hydro power system for a specific site is presented. This design is based on using commercially available components and equipment in an attempt to minimise the total cost of a micro hydro power system. The designed micro hydro power system is installed in-field and the predicted performance of the designed system is verified with measured results of the implemented system. Based on the results of the micro hydro power system landmark example, it is shown through a complete economic study, that this investment is very worthwhile. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die wêreld word daagliks meer en meer uitgedaag om beskikbare alternatiewe energiebronne effektief te benut, nie net om in die groeiende elektrisiteits aanvraag te voorsien nie, maar ook om die beskikbare fossiel brandstowwe te beskerm en ook om die hoeveelheid koolstofdioksied gasse wat deur fossiel brandstof kragstasies vrygestel word, te verminder. Dus het elke beskikbare alternatiewe energiebron, selfs klein riviertjies, ‘n bydrae om te lewer tot die poging om die hoeveelheid elektrisiteit wat deur fossiel brandstowwe opgewek word, te verminder. Die fokus van hierdie studie is op die ontwerp en implementering van ‘n lae koste netwerk gekoppelde 10 kW mikro hidro kragstelsel. Eerstens word die proses om die potensiaal van die beskikbare waterbron te bepaal, bespreek. Al die omgewings aspekte van hierdie mikro hidro kragstelsels word dan bespreek. Dit is ten volle gebaseer op die studies wat gedoen is vir die implementering van hierdie landmerk voorbeeld. Die volledige ontwerp van ‘n mikro hidro kragstelsel, vir ‘n spesifieke terrein, word bespreek. Hierdie ontwerp is hoofsaaklik gebasseer op die gebruik van kommersieel beskikbare komponente met die doel om die totale koste van die stelsel te minimeer. Die stelsel wat ontwerp is, is geïnstalleer op die terrein en die verwagte prestasie van die stelsel is toe geverifieer met gemete resultate van die geïnstalleerde stelsel. ‘n Volledige ekonomiese studie wat gebaseer is op die resultate van die geïnstalleerde stelsel, word dan bespreek en daar is gevind dat hierdie stelsel werklik finansieel die moeite werd is. / Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies

Hydropower is a more environmental friendly way of producing electric power than many other alternatives today. Though, the effects of constructing mega dams are much tangible for the local eco systems in addition to changing many people’s lives forever. In order to prevent floods, riverbank erosions or landslides, proper investigations of the environmental impact from dam constructions must be performed. One of the key parameters in such investigations is the flow discharge velocity. This master thesis treats experimental measurements and numerical simulations of the velocity downstream a model of Xiluodu dam. The Xiluodu dam is a mega dam under construction in China and will have a total capacity of 12 600 MW when completed. The model is in scale 1:100 and the experiments have been performed at Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. The velocity profile shows that the velocity in the middle of the river is larger than the velocity at the surface and near the riverbank. The comparison between the measured and the simulated velocities shows a difference of less than 20 percent in almost all points which can be considered as a good result. In those points where the difference is more than 20 percent, this is believed to be due to the position of these points. Some of them were located near a vortex and others very close to the bottom. This is a problem when sparsely measured topography in combination with linear interpolation makes the boundaries of the simulations incorrect. In order to perform better simulations, more densely topography data and better flow boundary conditions should be used. More measuring points of the velocity could also improve the result.

High greenhouse gas emissions increased the importance of renewable energy resources. Hydropower is among the most widely used type of renewable energy. Oppositions to big hydropower projects with reservoirs increased the use of small hydropower plants. Development of a small hydropower project is a challenging engineering task. Different software&rsquo / s are developed and used to make initial estimations of energy generation and initial costs of the project. RETScreen Clean Energy Analysis Software which can be used worldwide allows the user to estimate initial energy output and costs. In this study, three consecutive hydropower projects (HEPP), namely, Kemer&ccedil / ayir, &Uuml / &ccedil / hanlar and &Uuml / &ccedil / harmanlar HEPP&rsquo / s and four alternative project formulations to these projects are evaluated using RETScreen. The results of the evaluations are compared and best formulation for the projects is identified. In addition to economical profitability, hydropower plants need to be evaluated in terms of their environmental impacts and sustainability aspects. Sustainable development is a fundamental concept of natural resources management. International Hydropower Association prepared the Sustainability Assessment Protocol to evaluate new or existing hydropower facilities with respect to various environmental, social and economic sustainability aspects. The Sustainability Assessment Protocol of IHA is used to evaluate Kemer&ccedil / ayir HEPP. Due to lack of necessary information, rather than conducting a sustainability assessment of a small hydropower project (SHP), necessary information required to conduct such a study is identified.

Nowadays, the world faces with lack of electricity access, water scarcity, climate change and global warming. The hydropower industry has a crucial role to deal with these problems as well as to develop projects for sustainable development. However, if social, environmental and economical impacts of a hydroelectric power plant (HEPP) project are not considered, it might lead to irreparable destructions. Nowadays, in Turkey, due to social and environmental problems resulting from hydropower projects, the opponents of HEPP projects are increasing. Whether there are any deficiencies in hydropower project&rsquo / s development procedure causing environmental and social problems is researched in this thesis. The laws and legislations in Turkey related to hydropower project are investigated. The International Hydropower Association (IHA) has developed Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol for hydroelectric power projects. It assesses the projects according to economic, social and environmental measurements. Thus a case study, namely Kayraktepe Dam and HEPP Projects is evaluated to identify social, environmental and economical effects of the project at an early stage by using this Sustainability Assessment Protocol. The effects of large scale dam are compared with the effects of medium dam and five diversion weirs on social, environmental and economical issues.

Increasing importance of environmental concerns, growing demand for renewable energy, future introduction of electrical cars, improving energy efficiency, ambivalent attitude of society to nuclear power and multiple other external factors may become driving forces for future changes within the hydropower field in Sweden. On the other hand the dynamics for these changes can emerge from the value-systems, arguments, intentions and actions of the stakeholders, many of which are not satisfied by the present situation within the sector, but see its future changes in a different way. This makes the study case of hydropower in Sweden challenging for technology assessment and at the same time the technology assessment method, the scenario workshop that can provide interaction among the opposing parties and serve as a bridging event between the phase when various ways of future technology development are promoted by various actors and the decision-making phase. The ensuing research question is if the scenario workshop can be successfully applied to the hydropower case, the technology which is more than hundred years old, and if it can improve communication among the stakeholders to enhance their learning. The learning implies different dimensions such as Improved articulation of the problems at hand, probing each other‟s world and better understanding of the other stakeholders‟ positions and value systems, driving forces and crucial events for the future development of the whole hydropower sector and possible scenarios for this development. In order to answer this question more than 20 interviews with the main stakeholders have been carried out and a workshop based on possible external and internal future scenarios for hydropower in Sweden was organized. Evaluation of the workshop showed that the chosen method was efficient and the aim, which was stakeholders learning, was reached.

With a fast-growing electricity demand and a larger proportion of intermittent energy sources follows a greater need for flexible and balancing sources of electricity, such as hydropower. Planning of hydropower production is considered to be a difficult problem to solve due to several nonlinearities, combinatorial properties and the fact that it is a large scale system with spatial-temporal coupling. Optimization approaches are used for solving such problems and a common simplification is to disregard the effect of head variation on the power output. This thesis presents two methods for modeling the head dependency in optimization models for hydropower river systems, the Triangulation method and the Bilinear method. The Triangulation method implements a three-dimensional interpolation technique called triangulation, using a MILP formulation. This is a commonly used method found in the literature. The Bilinear method is a novel approach that applies a piecewise bilinear approximation of the power production function, resulting in a BLP problem. Also, a strategy for selecting which hydropower stations to include head dependence for is provided. The performance of the methods was evaluated on authentic test cases from Lule River and compared to results obtained by Vattenfall's current model without head dependency. The Triangulation method and the Bilinear method give higher accuracy, and are therefore considered more realistic, than the current model. Further, the results indicate that it is sufficient to include head dependence for a subset of stations since the error is significantly reduced. Mid- to long-term scenarios were solved with high accuracy when a subset of the stations was modeled as head dependent. Overall, the Bilinear method had a significantly shorter computational time than the Triangulation method.

The term hydropeaking refers to anthropogenically induced, short-duration, high-magnitude discharge pulses that are generated in lotic systems for electricity production. The practice of hydropeaking produces the largest source of renewable energy worldwide, and its use is projected to increase through the year 2040. The primary objective of this work was to evaluate the effects of hydropeaking on benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages, which are important components of lotic ecosystems. Results of this work show that, across a wide range of impacted systems worldwide, the consistently observed patterns of elevated benthic macroinvertebrate drift in response to hydropeaking pulses are primarily related to the rate at which discharge is increased (i.e., ramping rate) and secondarily to the time between pulses. In addition, it was shown that taxa inhabiting depositional habitat patches (i.e. fine substrates and slow water velocities) were most susceptible to peaking-induced drift, and that these taxa were also those most prevalent in hydropeaking-impacted systems. Collectively, these results suggest that increased pulse ramping rate and the resulting elevated macroinvertebrate drift may be positive selective forces, which benefit populations adapted for life in hydropeaking-impacted lotic ecosystems. These results provide a greater understanding of the factors that are most important for governing the effects of hydropeaking on benthic assemblages.

In order to have a successful outcome and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, the development of the hydropower sector is important. This as the hydropower contributes to the socioeconomic development and economic growth, as well as to have an efficient implementation of the SDGs. Nevertheless, the desired outcome of a hydropower development, which in fact will contribute to the other sectors. Thereby, dam governance is important in the success and an important mechanism as to find the balance in the hydropower projects. Since a good dam governance has the potential to create the achievement in both a hydropower development and Agenda 2030.  In relation to the research questions of this study, the importance of dam governance is discussed and analyzed in the success of a hydropower development and in the relation to the implementation of the SDGs.