One would suspect that hydro-electricity is a key example of renewable energy. Is it? And more important: is it sustainable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Belgium does not comprise mountains or fjords. Instead we use a pumping plant in Coo-Trois-Ponts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It uses electricity from the grid to pump water from a low reservoir uphill to an elevated reservoir, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
with the intention to use it later in Frances turbines for peak production. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This type of conversion is not production, but rather a storage facility intended for grid stabilisation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The efficiency is around 75%, which is even less than <\/p>\n\n\n\n
the efficiency of a wall battery pack. One quarter of the input is simply lost. There is nothing renewable about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In mountainous countries, hydro means using rain collected behind a dam to drive a turbine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is truly a free energy source. It converts potential energy, supplied by the sun <\/p>\n\n\n\n
in the form of evaporated sea water, into electricity. Not using the rain water accumulated behind the dam, would be a pure waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the capacity depends on the rain quantity. In dry periods, the level runs too low to operate. Norway produces over 90% of its <\/p>\n\n\n\n
electricity in this way, but currently (2022) suffers from an extremely dry season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there is a bigger, long-term problem behind the horizon. European hydro plants not only depend on rain, but to a large extend also on melting snow and ice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It appears now that the hydro capacity is being computed based on the mass flow of the melt water. Unfortunately, the melt water is based on <\/p>\n\n\n\n
frozen capacities that were established centuries ago, and are currently no longer maintained. Less fresh snow combined with melting glaciers <\/p>\n\n\n\n
limit the future capacity. This means that the availability of hydro-electricity <\/p>\n\n\n\n
will fall, rendering the dams and turbines useless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tough luck, so. As the current production is based on tapping a decreasing melt water capacity, hydro-electricity is not sustainable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One would suspect that hydro-electricity is a key example of renewable energy. Is it? And more important: is it sustainable? Belgium does not comprise mountains or fjords. Instead we use a pumping plant in Coo-Trois-Ponts. It uses electricity from the grid to pump water from a low reservoir uphill to an elevated reservoir, with the… Continue reading Hydro-electricity is not renewable nor sustainable?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brigid.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brigid.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brigid.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brigid.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brigid.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brigid.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/www.brigid.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brigid.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brigid.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brigid.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}