Hydroelectricity is one of the largest sources of energy accounting for roughly 20% of the worldwide demand of electricity with around 800 GW of capacity installed.There is considerable potential still left and developing countries like India and China can be expected to install another 500 GW over the coming years.Hydroelectricity is very important as it does not lead to GHG emissions and contribute to global warming.It also does not have the drawbacks like other renewable energy forms of high costs and intermittency.The advantages of hydroelectricity are substantial enough to far outweigh any disadvantages.But like nuclear energy,hydro power has some tail risks which can lead to catastrophic damage.The costs of hydroelectricity are not a simple function of dollar costs.It should also take into account the massive displacement costs in case of massive hydro dams,the loss of ecology and potential tails risks which can lead to massive payments.<\/p>\n
Hydroelectricity costs can be broken down into 2 categories<\/p>\n
a) Investment costs<\/p>\n
b) Operating Costs<\/p>\n
Investment Costs <\/strong>are the biggest component of Hydroelectricity accounting for almost 75-80% of the total lifecycle costs of a hydro power station.The investment costs like all other forms of energy varies depending on the site,technology etc.In general it costs between $1-3 per watt of hydro electricity.<\/p>\n Operating Costs<\/strong> of Hydel Power on the other hand are considerably lower as Hydro Electricity does not require any fuel except for water which is freely available.However it does not plant operators to monitor and maintain hydro power plant parts like turbines etc.<\/p>\n The total dollar costs of a hydro power plant is 2-5c\/Kwh while that of small hydro power turbines is 3-10c\/KwH.<\/strong>Note these costs are comparable to the lowest fossil fuel energy forms like coal and nuclear power.<\/p>\n External Costs of Hydroelectricity<\/strong><\/p>\n Besides the normal cots of\u00a0 hydroelectiricyty,there are external costs to hydroelectricity as well.The massive displacement of people due to the creation of reservoirs,wildlife affects,potential losses from catastrophic failure should also be factored in.However in the real world these costs are not added as the society bear the external costs while the hydroelectricity owners only bear the normal intrinsic costs.<\/p>\n It is very difficult to put a dollar number on the external cost of hydroelectricity as putting a cost on a human life or even for that matter animal life is not possible.Nuclear Power is considered as a very low cost but the cost of running the Fukushima Plant are extremely high.Using that cost as a benchmark would wipe out nuclear energy from the world map.<\/p>\n More Reads on Hydroelectricity<\/p>\n Hydroelectricity is one of the largest sources of energy accounting for roughly 20% of the worldwide demand of electricity with around 800 GW of capacity installed.There is considerable potential still left and developing countries like India and China can be expected to install another 500 GW over the coming years.Hydroelectricity is very important as it does not lead to GHG emissions and contribute to global warming.It also does not have the drawbacks like other renewable energy forms of high costs and intermittency.The advantages of hydroelectricity are substantial enough to far outweigh any disadvantages.But like nuclear energy,hydro power has some tail risks which can lead to catastrophic damage.The costs of hydroelectricity are not a simple function of dollar costs.It should also take into account the massive displacement costs in case of massive hydro dams,the loss of ecology and potential tails risks which can lead to massive payments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,95],"tags":[387,912,1118,1251,1373,1685,1720,1765,1951,2138,2173,2243,2256,2638,2647,3138,4065,4095,4680,5746],"class_list":["post-3477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fossil-fuels","category-hydro-energy","tag-alternative-energy","tag-carbon","tag-clean-technology","tag-cost-arbitrage","tag-debt","tag-electricity","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-financing","tag-ghg","tag-global-warming","tag-government","tag-green","tag-hydel","tag-hydroelectricity","tag-investment","tag-pollution","tag-power","tag-small-hydro","tag-utility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n