How Hydropower Works: Advantages of Hydropower

Hydropower is one of the easiest as well as cheapest sources of producing electricity. According to the survey reports of a number of organizations, nearly one fourth of the total electricity produced in the world, is produced by the hydropower plants.

[br] At the same time, hydropower is a renewable source and so there is no risk related to the process of generating electricity from hydropower. How hydropower works is an important question for the consumers as well as others.

Generally rivers carry huge amount of force with them that is known as hydropower. The hydropower plants capture the energy that remains in the water with the help of simple mechanics, this energy is converted into electricity. There are a number of factors that are related to the process of electricity production by a conventional hydropower plant. Among these, there are the dam, turbine, intake, generators, power lines, outflow, transformer and a lot more.

Dams are the base of most of the hydropower plants. The dam holds back water in a huge reservoir that is used to produce electricity. The height of the dam is very important for the purpose as the height decides electricity producing capacity of the respective plant.

[br]When the gates of a dam are opened, the water comes down very rapidly. This water is guided towards the turbine through a pipeline and the flow of the water turns the large blade of the turbine. In this way the kinetic energy of the river is changed into mechanical energy that is transformed into electricity by the generators.

The generators produce AC current that is transformed into higher-voltage current by the transformers. Once the transformation is done, the electricity is carried through the wires to different destinations.

Apart from the above described process of generating electricity by using the hydropower, there is another process too. In this process, the dam consists of two reservoirs. In the first process, once the electricity is generated, the water goes back to the mainstream. In this process, the water that flows through the hydropower plant, instead of going back to the river, is stored in another reservoir and is used again for the same purpose.

Among the two reservoirs, one is known as the upper reservoir and the other is the lower reservoir. Whenever the upper reservoir lacks water, some amount of water from the lower reservoir is pumped back to the upper reservoir. So, in the dry seasons also, the process of generating electricity remains undisturbed.