Power from Dam Conversions

That pesky cost thing keeps getting in the way. It's too bad that people actually expect to get a positive return on their investments.

Depending on the area and local natural water flow there are many places that could in fact implement this sort of mini hydro and be profitable with it.

There are many regions where at one time on the past localized mini hydroelectric power was the primary source of electricity for whole towns and surrounding areas before large scale rural electrification came into being.

Many of these communities actually still do have their original generation facilities and water works in place to this day but they have not been used or maintained for decades now.

Some years ago whieltraving aroudn Iowa while visiting my mom we went through number for small towns ans communities that had their original generation stations still largely intact and not just intact but sitting abandoned wide open to the public in what are now city parks.

From what I can remember from poking around in them while visiting over the years ranged from being roughly 150 to near 1 MW capable facilities back in their day which is actually pretty impressive given they were all designed around low head high volume river flow layouts.

Given the present cost of electricity a 250 KW system running 24/7/365 would produce at least $200,000 worth of power. Which if put against municipal power usage is a substantial cost offset given the modern electronics and automated control systems would make it largely unnecessary to have a full time person dedicated to the systems operation unless it was a larger one.

In the UK small local hydro still operates to support the overall grid load, and supply local loads should the grid links fail. http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3034176 640Kw from two generators.

What was left of the ones I saw were all vertical generator units with whatever turbine system they used set down under the buildings where I couldn't see what they used.

Still it was some rather impressive engineering to be getting 150 - 900+ KW out of less than 30 - 60 feet of elevation drop on early 1900's technology.

I'd love to see more of it put back into use and if I lived in that region I would probably pursue restoring one of those old power houses as a community project.

The main problem I see here is that off all of those dams were put back into operation is that the electric company profits would go down because of increased competition and people would get laid off and we can't have that can we ?

Supply and demand, less supply, more demand = more profits.

A dam as the name implies is used to hold back water. In order to generate energy you have to release the water. How many of those 80,000 dams are constructed to provide water for crops during the dry summer months. Farmers would not be happy that the Department of Energy is contemplating frittering away all their precious water to inefficiently generate a few gigawatts of energy with low head turbines. Just because storing water coincidentally creates a head does not mean that head is available to use for energy generation, or has the DoE not noticed that large parts of America have just suffered/are suffering the worst drought in 20 years. Maybe it is just that water conservation and use is not within the DoE's remit so they feel free to pontificate without considering the consequences. Sustainable sources of water over the next few years will be much more important than sustainable sources of energy. Energy you can get from anywhere. I am told that in many States you just have to turn of the water tap and and methane is delivered free along with your water. By the time the DoE has recouped $millions by selling permits to communities and contractors to install mini turbines, the cost of water will be too high for anybody to use it merely to generate energy.

I know of many dams in this area (classified as semi-arid, and having no local "waterways", but water flows from playa basin to playa basin) that are probably on the database, but only hold water a few weeks every few years, and are only there to control periodic flooding along otherwise dry draws.

More hydro seems like a good investment considering how much more generating capacity (from any source) will likely be needed as cars move to electric power.