Hydroelectric Power

Hydroelectricity is a derivative of hydropower, which is energy captured from river systems. Hydroelectricity is a scientific-technological system that resulted from the invention of electricity and the creation of the river water-powered turbine onto which a rotor is mounted to generate electricity. Michael Faraday (1791–1867) is credited with inventing electricity in his London laboratory in 1831. Twenty years passed before the Francis turbine was created in 1851. Hydroelectricity became a physical reality when the turbine and the rotor were effectively assembled to generate electricity at Rothbury, United Kingdom, in December 1880, and the first public electricity-supplying unit was installed at Godalming, United Kingdom, in 1881. In the United States, the earliest hydroelectric installation was placed at Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1882, and by 1889, a textile mill in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil, built its own electricity source to service the mill. The diffusion of this power source coincided with the accelerating pace of industrialization in Europe and the Americas.

Hydroelectricity enlarged the energy matrix at the time, post-1880s, when the pace of industrialization increased in northwestern Europe and the northeastern United States. The demand for electricity was rooted in the illumination of public spaces such as streets, parks, and public buildings, abolishing the gas lamps. Horse-drawn [Page 1507]streetcars were replaced by electric trolley cars, and factories turned to dynamo-powered machinery and away from belt-driven equipment. The increased demand for electricity fostered the expansion of the installed power park, which was building local thermal electric power stations in the coal-rich states. Coal-poor states such as France, Italy, and Switzerland decided to power their growing manufacturing systems by tapping into rivers to draw on the hydroelectric potential, reducing their dependence on coal and foreign exchange transfers. All three countries developed heavy engineering industries to build the mechanical infrastructure for hydropower dams. Builders of hydroelectric projects discovered an attractive incentive in hydroelectric power stations—namely, that they provided the least costly energy.

Just as there was a notable time lag between the invention of electricity and the introduction and spread of hydroelectric dams, there was also a time lag between the setting up of the transmission system and the effective transmission of electricity to the required distance. The one-time ½-km (kilometer) power line gradually expanded to hundreds of kilometers of transmission lines, and now 3,000 km of lines exist; with the coming of superconductivity, even these limits will fall. Efficiency (measured in kilovolts) is determined by the distance the electricity is transmitted—that is, the higher the number of kilovolts, the greater is the distance that the power can be transmitted. Energy loss occurs at two levels: one in transmission (transport) and the other in stepping up or down the kilovolt value of the electricity sent. Generally, 15% of electricity is lost in the transforming process. This is mechanical, not distance based.

Hydroelectricity has been instrumental in the industrialization process in many countries. From 1920 to 1940, hydroelectricity was widely implanted as a key electricity source in Europe and had strong acceptance in the USSR from 1917 to 1990. In the United States, hydroelectricity acquired landmark status with the Hoover Dam on the Lower Colorado River. In the mid 1930s, the United States created the Tennessee Valley Authority, with a multiple hydroelectric dam system to foster regional economic development and land reclamation. The Columbia River basin became the site for numerous major dams, for example, Bonneville and Grand Coulee, serving industrialization needs such as aluminum production and uranium processing for the federal government and the electricity needs of the Pacific coast region. Many of these dams would later become a key cause of population declines in several species of salmon, by destroying important spawning and rearing habitats.

...