Climate > Potential for Small Hydropower Plants Recognised
Potential for Small Hydropower Plants Recognised
27/08/2008
The Swiss Mountain Water Award 2008 has recognised the 60,000SWF prize to the project localising potential locations for small environmetally friendly hydropower plants. The use of locally-sourced water power sees an increasing interest and families and companies are ready to pay a higher price for this kind of electricity.
As in Switzerland there are several mountain-like waterflows, there is potential for more of these kind of devices. It is however quite diffiult to establish potential locations for these plants. Netwerk Wasser im Berggebiet has awarded the Swiss Mountain Water Award to WaterGISweb for the project GIS-supported Identification of potential locations for small Hydropower plants. The concept has been developed in cooperation with Sol-E Suisse whom also gave the order for a prototype.
The award money will be dedicated to develop a widely accessible online instrument that facilitates identification of locations, making use of a GIS sytem. Depending on several geographical characteristics like the waterflow, topography and environmental considerations or touristical destinations the computer can calculate optimal places for powerplants with performance classes to be defined. They can be projected in Google Earth and for every location, a fact sheet of main information can be made available. In this way, the starting phase that is in fact labour intensive, can be automated importantly. For some areas, WaterGisWeb already has a prototype and a first trial with locations in the field with Sol-E Suisse shows that the system is already functioning very well.
John Dooley, director of utilities and engineering for the City of Columbia (US), talks about a USD40 million project for the city's Metropolitan Wastewater Treatment Plant. The capacity will increase to 150 million gallons/day (now 80 million gallons), and the pumping facility is to be relocated on the property. Requests for quotes are being prepared to be published soon.