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Credit: Energy Information Administration. Water is everywhere, which is fortunate for all of humanity, as water is essential for life. Even though water is not always available in the needed quantity and quality for all people everywhere, people have learned to get and use water for all of their water needs, from drinking, cleaning, irrigating crops, producing electricity, and for just having fun.
So just how do we get electricity from water? Actually, hydroelectric and coal-fired power plants produce electricity in a similar way. In both cases a power source is used to turn a propeller-like piece called a turbine. Nothing is perfect on Earth, and that includes the production of electricity using flowing water. Hydroelectric-production facilities are indeed not perfect a dam costs a lot to build and also can have negative effects on the environment and local ecology , but there are a number of advantages of hydroelectric-power production as opposed to fossil-fuel power production.
Gravity causes it to fall through the penstock. Demand for electricity is not "flat" and constant. Demand goes up and down during the day, and overnight there is less need for electricity in homes, businesses, and other facilities. For example, here in Atlanta, Georgia at PM on a hot August weekend day, you can bet there is a huge. Diagram of a hydroelectric generator is courtesy of U.
Army Corps of Engineers. As to how this generator works, the Corps of Engineers explains it this way : "A hydraulic turbine converts the energy of flowing water into mechanical energy. A hydroelectric generator. Skip to main content. Search Search. Water Science School. Hydroelectric Power Water Use. Get water-use data. Water Use Information by Topic Learn more. Science Center Objects Overview Related Science Multimedia Hydropower, or hydroenergy, is a form of renewable energy that uses the water stored in dams, as well as flowing in rivers to create electricity in hydropower plants.
Credit: Wikimedia. The Corps's 75 bases have an installed capacity of about 21, megawatts — that's 24 percent of the nation's hydroelectric output. The Corps is also the biggest federal operator of outdoor leisure activities in the country, providing 33 percent of all freshwater fishing opportunities. There are thousands of boat launch ramps and 20 annual fishing tournaments at their largest parks and lakes. For businesses, the recreational use of hydro facilities makes their vicinity an agreeable place to live.
This can help with staff recruiting and retention. Hydropower energy is also employed in flood risk management. There are 94 million acres of land in America that are vulnerable to floods, and the plants play a major part in preventing them and practicing damage limitation.
In , working alongside teams at the University of Washington, the U. Understanding the water cycle is important to understanding hydropower. The water cycle has three steps: Solar energy heats water on the surface of rivers, lakes, and oceans, which causes the water 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 cycle again. The amount of precipitation that drains into rivers and streams in a geographic area determines the amount of water available for producing hydropower. Seasonal variations in precipitation and long-term changes in precipitation patterns, such as droughts, can have large effects on the availability of hydropower production.
Because the source of hydroelectric power is water, hydroelectric power plants are usually located on or near a water source. The volume of the water flow and the change in elevation—or fall, and often referred to as head —from one point to another determine the amount of available energy in moving water. In general, the greater the water flow and the higher the head, the more electricity a hydropower plant can produce. At hydropower plants water 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 force of the river's current applies pressure on a turbine. The facilities may have a weir in the water course to divert water flow to hydro turbines.
Storage systems , where water accumulates in reservoirs created by dams on streams and rivers and is released through hydro turbines as needed to generate electricity. Most U. Pumped-storage hydropower facilities are a type 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 below 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 power plants.
Pumped-storage hydroelectric systems generally use more electricity to pump water to the upper water storage reservoirs than they produce with the stored water. Therefore, pumped-storage facilities have net negative electricity generation balances. These are called field poles, and are mounted on the perimeter of the rotor. The rotor is attached to the turbine shaft, and rotates at a fixed speed. When the rotor turns, it causes the field poles the electromagnets to move past the conductors mounted in the stator.
This, in turn, causes electricity to flow and a voltage to develop at the generator output terminals. Demand for electricity is not "flat" and constant.
Demand goes up and down during the day, and overnight there is less need for electricity in homes, businesses, and other facilities. For example, here in Atlanta, Georgia at PM on a hot August weekend day, you can bet there is a huge demand for electricity to run millions of air conditioners!
But, 12 hours later at AM Hydroelectric plants are more efficient at providing for peak power demands during short periods than are fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants, and one way of doing that is by using "pumped storage", which reuses the same water more than once.
Pumped storage is a method of keeping water in reserve for peak period power demands by pumping water that has already flowed through the turbines back up a storage pool above the power plant at a time when customer demand for energy is low, such as during the middle of the night.
The water is then allowed to flow back through the turbine-generators at times when demand is high and a heavy load is placed on the system. The reservoir acts much like a battery, storing power in the form of water when demands are low and producing maximum power during daily and seasonal peak periods. An advantage of pumped storage is that hydroelectric generating units are able to start up quickly and make rapid adjustments in output.
They operate efficiently when used for one hour or several hours. Because pumped storage reservoirs are relatively small, construction costs are generally low compared with conventional hydropower facilities. Water is everywhere, which is fortunate for all of humanity, as water is essential for life.
Even though water is not always available in the needed quantity and quality for all people everywhere, people have learned to get and use water for all of their water needs, from drinking, cleaning, irrigating crops, producing electricity, and for just having fun. Nothing is perfect on Earth, and that includes the production of electricity using flowing water.
Hydroelectric-production facilities are indeed not perfect a dam costs a lot to build and also can have negative effects on the environment and local ecology , but there are a number of advantages of hydroelectric-power production as opposed to fossil-fuel power production.
Gravity causes it to fall through the penstock.
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