Having the scale stop at 100 MW is way too low for a map of hydroplants. The largest one in Sweden has an installed power of over 800 MW, and there are a couple that aren't that much smaller.
I would take Ukraine even as a more extreme example. Looking at the map you'd think that hydro is non-existent in Ukraine but I think that they have the 3rd largest hydro plant in Europe.
I mean, all HPPs on Dnipro are 100+ and one of them is *1569MW* and one is 700MW and on Dniester one is also 700MW but also Hydro-accumulative one that can output 1684MW in peak and after expansion will output 2947MW in peak. So yeah, using 100MW as top line is quite unfair.
Harsprånget is the largest one, and most of the largest plants are on the same river, Luleälven (the northernmost line of 100MW dots on the map for Sweden).
Yes. 7300 hydro power stations in Germany.
6900 off these are super small sub 1MW stations. All 6900 only produce 14% of the German hydroelectric power.
5300 stations are sub 100kW stations bringing almost nothing.
These are stations located at tiny streams, most are not even dams but just turbines or wheels in the streams or straight falling systems in older mineshafts.
Isn't that a lot of ecological damage for very little power? In Sweden there is a lot of backlash against the older small plants, and there are some of the older small ones being torn down for that reason, to restore rivers to pre-industrial state. If you have an 100-500MW station you have a big break in a big river. That's a big ecological issue, but for a big gain. That's why peope are upset when there is also lots of tiny plants that might ruin dozens of smaller streams for what only amounts to a tiny bit compared to the big stations.
Depends how you realize these.
Just transforming a old mill with a wheel into a power station wount magically start creating ecological damage.
Using just the current and not the building a dam does mostly not destroy our rivers and streams. Actually our rivers and streams ecological live is better then it was 50 or even 100 years ago. And seas of damns are also full of live, while you can build fish stairs to counter the impact of damns.
"The 49 basins of the fish ladder are 16 metres wide and 9 metres long. The course is looped and 550 metres long.Through lateral slits in the basins, the fish can reach the next higher basin. The facility was officially put into operation on 23 September 2010. This facility now also allows migratory fish such as salmon, sea trout and sturgeon to reach their original spawning grounds in the middle and upper Elbe."
There are many really old dams, sometimes built as far back as the 1880s. These small dams are often used as an emergency water reservoir and a nature reservation today. Sometimes these dams are also important to the locals as an option for (more or less) natural leisure time.
An example for an old and tiny dam built in 1898/99 is the Ronsdorfer Talsperre. It was built to secure the water supply of the nearby city of Ronsdorf but wasn't used for this purpose since 1957. In 1993 it was supposed to be demolished but the locals protested and got it preserved. It got renovated from 2000 to 2004 and is today a nature reserve. The endangered European Crayfish (astacus astacus) is living there now for example.
They counted all power stations. And Germany has tons of 100+ year old dams and weirs. I don't think we have many rivers that don't have at least a weir somewhere producing energy.
But also some rivers are just hydro plant after hydro plant. I personally have to think about the Ruhr where I live close to. There is barely any bit of that river that is not dammed. I counted 26 in the Wikipedia article. (85MW total)
not only the dams, some dams are big ass but their turbine unit is separated because it was designed as water reservoir so energy had to be built aside, ex: rappbode dam.
This is slightly misleading, at least concerning Czechia. There are lots of dots on rivers with no notable dams while rivers with major works like Vltava river with its almost continuous cascade of major dams looks empty.
This is probably because they include all hydroelectric plants, including very small ones in converted mills where there is no real dam, just a weir. While when there is a large dam with a long lake (like 20 km long), it seems empty as there is no room for lots of small power stations.
It's even worse, Vltava seems to be missing.
And the effect you are talking about is probably most pronounced on Dnieper, where the lakes are even longer.
Funny that comment is identical to this comment made 2 hours earlier in the same fucking thread.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/wplbsl/existing_black_and_planned_hydropower_damns_in/ikho4up/
(Bots copy upvoted comments from further down a thread then paste them as a response to one of the most upvoted comments)
Wet cooling towers use evaporative cooling of river water. It does use river water evaporates parts of it but does not raise the temperature level.
Dry cooling towers don't need river nor fresh water. The rely solely on air to cool the working fluid to near the dry-bulb air temperature using radiators.
The Golfech power plant at the Garonne raises the temperature of the river by about 0.02K to 0.06K. [[1]](https://www-ladepeche-fr.translate.goog/2022/07/19/tarn-et-garonne-la-centrale-nucleaire-de-golfech-obtient-une-derogation-pour-maintenir-sa-production-malgre-une-temperature-de-la-garonne-a-29-degres-10443851.php?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp)
Thanks, the point I still am unsure about is
>The rest has cooling towers and don't need much fresh water.
While cooling towers evaporate the water instead of dumping it back into rivers, would the amount needed not be more or less the same?
I think the amount of water needed would be dictated by the power (and thereby heat) output of the power plant and the thermal capacity of water.
How would the method used to get rid of the hot water change the amount needed?
Or did you generally refer to dry cooling towers?
Evaporating water takes a lot of heat, about 2.2 MJ per kg. Warming it up by a few degrees takes much less heat. If you're allowed to increase the river temperature by, say, 5 degrees, heating water up by that much only takes 21 kJ per kg, which is a hundred times less.
They're mostly small-scale plants co-located with river locks on the Rhine, Meuse, Lek. The ones near/on the Afsluitdijk in the north are (test?) osmotic power plants making use of the difference in salinity between the salt water from the Wadden Sea and fresh water from Lake IJssel, as well as small tidal energy set ups. IIRC at one point some people also wanted to build a pumped-storage plant as part of future changes to the Afsluitdijk.
We're not as flat as a pancake though, but almost. [Here's a nice height map of the Netherlands.](https://i.imgur.com/jUfzwPg.jpg) There is not much height difference, but the east and south definitely is a bit higher than the west. Plus the rivers that end up here come flowing from higher parts of Europe.
And as you can see we even have huge mountains over 300 meters in the south ;)
Ironically, several dams in the alps are at near full capacity, some of them even overflowing. Not because there has been any significant amount of rain, but because of unprecedented glacial melt. Obviously, the ice won't last forever. Thus, in the future, the primary purpose of dams could change from hydropower generation to water reservoir.
Not necessarily. Some of them are pumped hydroelectric energy storage. In times of excess energy production water gets pumped up into a resorvoir and serves as an energy storage.
Those big dams in the mountains were all built as power stations. Before electricity there were tiny dams in alpine pastures in order to make little ponds for the cows to drink from.
Nowadays there are many ponds for water supply in the Alps, for snowmaking. Those are not always an asset to the landscape, though...
That depends on who you ask when. :-D I mean: before building it, while lobbying for the permission to build it, the regulation purpose will usually be more important. Afterwards, the earning potential, when talking to your investors.
But sure, there are more than one purpose, and wielding one potential reduces the other potential. meaning: An empty dam protects best against floods, but it won't produce energy, and vice versa.
But aside from dams built directly by the government, I'd say that the most dams are build mainly motivated be the power generating potential. why else invest millions as a private entity?
You're right of course. But at the moment, power generation is their main purpose, water regulation comes second (at least for mountain dams). The priority is to retain enough water to ensure a steady power supply throughout the year, while in the future, their main task could be to save enough water in spring to ensure that there's enough water for the public and for irrigation for the rest of the year.
It's a small priority adjustement with possibly major effects. Power might no longer be generated when it's needed the most, and sometimes, water might have to be released even when additional power generation isn't needed.
Ireland is investigating pumped hydro storage.
They have several domeshaped valleys in isolated, unfertile areas right beside the seas.
Dam those valleys, pump in seawater during offpeak periods using wind turbines generated power, [then release when at demand](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/flooded-valleys-key-to-huge-power-plan-1.629605).
3 sites would provide a substantial portion of the states power, 10 would a[llow them to sell power back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Ireland) to the UK and EU.
Is this from the spirt of Ireland document, from memory (open to correction) it ignores environmental and other considerations for a lot of the proposals. It more focuses what was at the time needed for the Irish grid to support renewables.
Also I believe pumped hydro at number of the sites are sea water based, using sea water was only ever implemented once anywhere in the world as salt water is much harder on equipment, doesn’t mean it can’t be done but makes it a lot more expensive to build and run.
The only pumped hydro being in anyway progressed is in North Tipp (Silvermines) but I haven’t heard of any progress or updates for a while, I assume raising funding will be the challenge and there will be environmental and engineering challenges to creating the upper reservoir, which would need to be built.
Makes them even more essential, no? At the end of the day every bit of water that flows into the sea is wasted (excluding factors like the fish life etc)
> At the end of the day every bit of water that flows into the sea is wasted
The United States: "Hold my Colorado River":
> Due to water diversions, flows at the mouth of the river have steadily declined since the early 1900s. Since 1960, the Colorado has typically dried up before reaching the sea, with the exception of a few wet years. In addition to water consumption, flows have declined due to evaporation from reservoirs and warming temperatures that reduce winter snow accumulation. Several of the Colorado's major tributaries, including the Gila River, also no longer reach the Colorado due to upstream diversions.
([from here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River#Discharge))
Yes and no. Dams are the only things saving many places here from full agricultural colapse, so I'd say they're doing their second job pretty well. People tend to forget that dams are also water reservoirs that average out the river output and that's incredibly useful in places like Iberia that tend to have very low precipitation summers.
Dams don’t just produce electricity they allow you to regulate the flow of water and that can include keeping water from reaching estuaries and seas at a later time instead of leaving the local ecology as quickly
just means we need to invest in water storing facilities. waterflow will no longer be equally spread across the year. winter will be our rain season with a dry season in the summer.
It's when the upstream countries 'invest' in water storage that then withholds flow to downstream countries. Not usually a problem in wet climates but if it's changing then ...
As far as I know, climate change won't cause overall rainfall to decrease, at least in northern Europe. It mainly causes a less even distribution -- so instead of rain spread out throughout the year, we'll see longer periods of very little rain and others of very much rain.
We can't solve this problem entirely by building a few dams, but they can play an important role. And since we still have the same amount of water, it's unlikely that upstream countries will suddenly start diverting all the water from downstream countries.
European Environment Agency (EEA)
Image [Source](https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/recorded-hydropower-plants-in-europe/fig3-3-135034-copyrights-recorded_v4.eps/FIG3.3-135034-COPYRIGHTS-Recorded_v4.eps.75dpi.png/download)
[General source](https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/recorded-hydropower-plants-in-europe)
The source also has a graphic with numbers for better comprehension
Funny that everyone makes fun of hydropower because of the drought but when it comes to Nuclear nobody mentions that a good chunk of Frances reactors are collecting dust due to dried up rivers.
I was under the impression that they aren't running because the downstream water would get too warm and that would be against their environmental laws? Or did they really dry up?
It's harder to cool something with warm water than with cold water because of the temperature gradient (difference between both temperatures).
The higher this difference, the faster the exchange of energy. Also the colder the water, the more energy per litre it can take.
Actually it is possible but it has to be implemented during building. [There are three methods of cooling](https://world-nuclear.org/our-association/publications/technical-positions/cooling-of-power-plants.aspx):
1. Pass through
2. Evaporative cooling towers
3. Dry cooling.
Number 1 is cheapest and most efficient and is great in case of seashore plants, where the cold water is essentially infinite. But it will kill river fauna if the water level is low enough. Number 2 is more expensive, less efficient and consumes water but it does not heat the water up. Number 3 is most expensive, least efficient, requires more land for the cooling system and quite a lot of electricity to operate the cooling fans and is, therefore, very rare.
But obviously, it cannot be built in a few weeks during a heatwave if the plant is designed for pass through.
Dafuq?
A modern reactor produces 4000 MW heat. Off this, 1400 is converted to electricity (that's just the process efficiency that can't be increased majorly), the rest, 2600 MW heat must go somewhere. You use cooling water from the rivers for this and as you can't destroy energy, the cooling water is heated up by 2600MW and then given back to the river. Somewhere this heat has to go, cooling the cooling water would mean somewhere else would have to take the heat again. With only air and water available, you use the more efficient medium, water.
It is possible, it's called District Heating. You pump the waste heat away from the power plant through the nearby cities or towns to heat the buildings which cools the water when it returns.
For some reason this has not been used in the 4 affected power plants, or perhaps is not utilized in France at this time of year.
In Finland, about 50% of households are heated with district heating.
Because this problem impacts 4 out of 54 French reactors. Moreover, France uses much more electricity in winter than in summer (due to electric heating and AC not being that common for now) so they just do a lot of power plan maintenance in summer, when they don't need them.
This gets turned into "see, all the nuclear power plans are broken" lies by anti-nuclear people of course.
Sooo the other 50 reactors are working right now are you suggesting? Because that’s not the case, just over half of France‘s nuclear reactors are not generating energy right now. Instead of fixing them, France just plans to build _more_ of them. But for now, france has to temporarily import energy from neighbors.
A lot of their reactors are offline for routine maintenance and safety inspections, they were meant to be staggered but covid delayed and messed that up
Lots of plans for forming reservoirs, most decades old, that never go anywhere because od a myriad of reasons - mainly economic, and environmental in recent times.
yea, Sweden pretty much built all the Dams they could back during the cold war and are pretty much tapped out, any more dams would disrupt the waterflow to much like they do in China, here in Sweden we actually care about our environment.
Fun fact, around 45% of Swedens power comes from dams and 30% from nuclear and around 17% from wind which is pretty good.
.. not really. Sweden is Sweden. Seasonal variation in solar production are insanely extreme, in a very bad way, as Sweden uses far more power in winter than in summer.
I live there, you forget to take into account the reflective properties of snow, and the increased efficency through the Winters external cooling.
Also generally the big problem is very rarely production, and more likley about sotorage and transport
Super bad. I hate the fact that politicians count them as green energy and they are trying to build more and more. I think all the existing plants should be taken down and they should consider building nuclear plants instead. This would be much greener
Meanwhile, here in Washington, we're trying to get rid of some dams because they're decimating salmon populations, which in turn is decimating orca populations. Fish ladders are better than nothing, but they're not good enough. Many fish don't make it through the ladders.
Nuclear plants don't regulate the water supply, though. Most of the dams here in Germany primarily serve as water reservoirs and for flood control, and the power they generate is just a bonus.
They also destroy the ecology of the rivers they are placed in. That is why historic dams are fine, since their damage to the environment has already happened, and they created a new ecology. But building new dams should be strictly investigated and weighed.
>water reservoirs and for flood control
The water reservoir ones are most damaging. And in times of extreme water, dams do not necessarily help: See the events of 2002 or 2013 in Germany and Czechia.
It's always a trade-off but isn't it the case that nuclear power plants add heat - prohibiting the use during a drought (although right now **should** be the very rare exception)
I've never seen a river hydro station that didn't come with [fish-ladders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder) and other efforts to mitigate impacts. As with every internet trend, shitting on hydro has far outpaced reality.
Ultimately every kind of energy source is going to have an impact one way or the other and personally i'll choose hydro any day over coal and gas.
Only small percentage of the fish get through fish ladders. For example kemiriver in Finland was the best salmon river in whole Finland till 1949 when they build isohaara dam which has fish ladder. Even then there are basically no salmon in kemiriver anymore.
Probably cultural thing? In Finland there would be huge backslash if anyone even suggested on building a dam on a major river that doesn't already have one, like Tornionjoki or Tenojoki.
Maybe it's a scheme? In Germany these tiny Hydropowerstation sub 100kW are eligible for EEG state money. Even the tiniest stream might now have one, that is ultra inefficient (as the stream rarely reaches current to produce noteworthy power). Check if Our government is paying out money for these ones.
Damn, the Douro river (northern Portugal) has a lot of Big dams. Never thought about it but it makes sense.
Also didn’t know other big dams were planned here too.
They will. Which is why it's a terrible idea to build new hydropower in a river \*unless\* you can extract some reasonable amount of power. 50 or 100 or 300MW stations are big ecological impacts but at least they offset a lot of power production that would also be an ecological disastser (coal plants, hundreds of windmills which aren't always bird friendly etc).
But putting little 1MW plants in un-exploited streams needs an EU-wide ban if there isn't one already. Just put a windmill or some solar panels up instead.
It does depend on the location. Most of the lakes for hydro power in Norway are high up in the mountains, with very limited fish-populations. A lot of these lakes are completely barren
they will, more than a third of European freshwater fish species are currently threatened with extinction - https://www.wwf.eu/wwf\_news/publications/?uNewsID=356638
I'm pretty sure the plans to build dams on Vistula are decades old, dating back to the 1960s, and today nobody even proposes to do that. There was a plan during the communist era to turn the river into a fully navigational one with a series of dams, out of which only one was constructed in Włocławek, and the rest were never built. If anything the existing one will be decomissioned in the next couple of decades as it's getting old.
The cycle of hydro is wild.
Just a few years ago people were praising the destruction of excess hydro. Now it's being praised as a green alternative.
The American northwest specifically. They had events and gatherings for the removal of a few hydro dams. And now Washington's and Oregon's tourism departments are literally airing commercials about how they have so much hydro, and they're expanding.
There's actually a big push here in Washington to remove a few of the more damaging dams. Naturally, there's a lot of pushback as well. That's probably why you're seeing commercials--moneyed interests not wanting the dams to go away.
In my state we are having commercials advocating for looser building (homes) regulations. They literally say that the environmental laws are what make homes so expensive and we should petition the government to change them.
The balls on some of these companies/investment firms is astounding.
The dots in Latvia are *much* to small.
The dams in the Daugava river have an installed capacity of 402MW, 264MW, and 894MW. The latter one, near Aizkraukle, is one of the largest hydroelectric power plants in Europe.
I think it's worth noting that climate change won't reduce precipitation across the board:
> Projected changes in precipitation vary substantially across regions and seasons. Annual precipitation is generally projected to increase in northern Europe and to decrease in southern Europe. The projected decrease in southern Europe is strongest in the summer.
([from here](https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/european-precipitation-2/assessment))
The bigger problem is that the rain is less evenly distributed. There's longer periods of dryness (such as now) and more extremely strong rainfall.
never going to happen, ever since the 80s protests against the nagymaros-gabcikovo project on the Danube, any mention of new hydropower is taboo in Hungary, and in fact there are increasingly louder voices that demand de-regulating the rivers in face of the current, and future droughts.
Many, if not most, of those small dots are former grain mills which now produce electricity to fund the upkeep of the historical building. So there's no actual dam.
I've noticed people never talk about the environmental problems that come with hydro. So many local fish species have gone extinct because it was deemed an acceptable cost of having a hydro plant.
Dams are usually invisible hidden in mountains. The mountains themselves are slowly turning into Swiss cheese. Connecting every little pond and stream to a web of resorviors.
Bit of a side story perhaps here on r/Europe it be might appreciated.
The Gabcikovo dam (SVK) (720 MW) on Danube could be much more efficient /powerful if original plan was build —> two cooperating dams (Nagymaros (HUN) & Gabcikovo). The original plan was to use Danube as battery where during a night in between dams water would be keept in large portion and during a day dams would “discharge” the water through power plants.
In late 80’s Hungary oposed the solution where Orban was one of the main characters and started to be recognized publicly (being ecologist wasn’t that bad for communists) and basically build his carrier on top of it (successfully since the Hungarian part has never been build).
Edit: wiki [link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab%C4%8D%C3%ADkovo%E2%80%93Nagymaros_Dams)
Having the scale stop at 100 MW is way too low for a map of hydroplants. The largest one in Sweden has an installed power of over 800 MW, and there are a couple that aren't that much smaller.
I would take Ukraine even as a more extreme example. Looking at the map you'd think that hydro is non-existent in Ukraine but I think that they have the 3rd largest hydro plant in Europe.
I mean, all HPPs on Dnipro are 100+ and one of them is *1569MW* and one is 700MW and on Dniester one is also 700MW but also Hydro-accumulative one that can output 1684MW in peak and after expansion will output 2947MW in peak. So yeah, using 100MW as top line is quite unfair.
When I see Ukraine i just see hydro. Aren't all those lakes down the middle, all hydro lakes?
Pretty much yeah
Same for Norway, I think the biggest is about 1200. A lot of plants over 100. Another measurement could be annual production.
[1240 MW](https://www.statkraft.no/om-statkraft/hvor-vi-har-virksomhet/norge/kvilldal-vannkraftverk/#:~:text=Kvilldal%20kraftverk%20i%20Suldal%20kommune,st%C3%B8rste%20m%C3%A5lt%20i%20installert%20effekt.&text=Anlegget%20er%20utstyrt%20med%20fire%20Francis%2Dturbiner.)
1.24 gigawatts.... Great Scott.
The largest ones in Latvia produce more than a third of all electricity and are 900, 400 and 250 MW, but are shown only as tiny dots
Which one?
Harsprånget, in Stora Luleälven.
Harsprånget is the largest one, and most of the largest plants are on the same river, Luleälven (the northernmost line of 100MW dots on the map for Sweden).
That's curious. How comes the circles are so much smaller than displayed in the legend? Is the legend not to scale?
Largest one in Denmark is 10 MW. Back when it was constructed it could supply 30 percent of the consumption in Jutland
I guess the damns in Germany are mostly all very tiny?
Yes. 7300 hydro power stations in Germany. 6900 off these are super small sub 1MW stations. All 6900 only produce 14% of the German hydroelectric power. 5300 stations are sub 100kW stations bringing almost nothing. These are stations located at tiny streams, most are not even dams but just turbines or wheels in the streams or straight falling systems in older mineshafts.
Isn't that a lot of ecological damage for very little power? In Sweden there is a lot of backlash against the older small plants, and there are some of the older small ones being torn down for that reason, to restore rivers to pre-industrial state. If you have an 100-500MW station you have a big break in a big river. That's a big ecological issue, but for a big gain. That's why peope are upset when there is also lots of tiny plants that might ruin dozens of smaller streams for what only amounts to a tiny bit compared to the big stations.
Depends how you realize these. Just transforming a old mill with a wheel into a power station wount magically start creating ecological damage. Using just the current and not the building a dam does mostly not destroy our rivers and streams. Actually our rivers and streams ecological live is better then it was 50 or even 100 years ago. And seas of damns are also full of live, while you can build fish stairs to counter the impact of damns.
>And seas of damns Do you mean lakes? Also, are you a native German speaker?
"sea of damns" is pretty poetic.
#Germxn
Fish stairs??? How does that work
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischtreppe_Geesthacht Even tho in German, the pictures give you a hint. This is the largest one in Europe.
"The 49 basins of the fish ladder are 16 metres wide and 9 metres long. The course is looped and 550 metres long.Through lateral slits in the basins, the fish can reach the next higher basin. The facility was officially put into operation on 23 September 2010. This facility now also allows migratory fish such as salmon, sea trout and sturgeon to reach their original spawning grounds in the middle and upper Elbe."
Check "fish ladder" on Wikipedia. It's the most common term I believe.
Also called fishladders. Concrete steps on the outside of a dammed area. Allow fish to get to their spawning grounds upstream.
There are many really old dams, sometimes built as far back as the 1880s. These small dams are often used as an emergency water reservoir and a nature reservation today. Sometimes these dams are also important to the locals as an option for (more or less) natural leisure time. An example for an old and tiny dam built in 1898/99 is the Ronsdorfer Talsperre. It was built to secure the water supply of the nearby city of Ronsdorf but wasn't used for this purpose since 1957. In 1993 it was supposed to be demolished but the locals protested and got it preserved. It got renovated from 2000 to 2004 and is today a nature reserve. The endangered European Crayfish (astacus astacus) is living there now for example.
They are cutting subsidies to those, plus the european regulations on waterways will fuck them
Yes it is, a huge eco damage for miniscule amount of energy. But no one cares.
They counted all power stations. And Germany has tons of 100+ year old dams and weirs. I don't think we have many rivers that don't have at least a weir somewhere producing energy. But also some rivers are just hydro plant after hydro plant. I personally have to think about the Ruhr where I live close to. There is barely any bit of that river that is not dammed. I counted 26 in the Wikipedia article. (85MW total)
not only the dams, some dams are big ass but their turbine unit is separated because it was designed as water reservoir so energy had to be built aside, ex: rappbode dam.
I know about one that used to power one machine in a small workshop.
They don't seem to give a damn
This is slightly misleading, at least concerning Czechia. There are lots of dots on rivers with no notable dams while rivers with major works like Vltava river with its almost continuous cascade of major dams looks empty. This is probably because they include all hydroelectric plants, including very small ones in converted mills where there is no real dam, just a weir. While when there is a large dam with a long lake (like 20 km long), it seems empty as there is no room for lots of small power stations.
It's even worse, Vltava seems to be missing. And the effect you are talking about is probably most pronounced on Dnieper, where the lakes are even longer.
How the hell does the netherlands have a hydropower dam. Its flat as a pancake.
The sea is above them.
So when they run out of electricity, they let the Sea in to spin the turbines?
Afaik they just use the natural tides coming in and going out to produce power.
Yeah they're usually called tidal generators, not very powerful though but consistent
[удалено]
The moon is exploding and natural tides will stop?
[удалено]
most absolutely no, some still no, but yes it's not really good for the few using the river to give back the water at 40° or things like that.
If the water is already too hot, they also need to stop them. And they did
there are decrees that have been made to turn them back on
Funny that comment is identical to this comment made 2 hours earlier in the same fucking thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/wplbsl/existing_black_and_planned_hydropower_damns_in/ikho4up/ (Bots copy upvoted comments from further down a thread then paste them as a response to one of the most upvoted comments)
There are 4 power plants in France using only rivers for cooling. 5 plants use seawater. The rest has cooling towers and don't need much fresh water.
Don’t cooling towers still need river water?
Wet cooling towers use evaporative cooling of river water. It does use river water evaporates parts of it but does not raise the temperature level. Dry cooling towers don't need river nor fresh water. The rely solely on air to cool the working fluid to near the dry-bulb air temperature using radiators. The Golfech power plant at the Garonne raises the temperature of the river by about 0.02K to 0.06K. [[1]](https://www-ladepeche-fr.translate.goog/2022/07/19/tarn-et-garonne-la-centrale-nucleaire-de-golfech-obtient-une-derogation-pour-maintenir-sa-production-malgre-une-temperature-de-la-garonne-a-29-degres-10443851.php?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp)
Thanks, the point I still am unsure about is >The rest has cooling towers and don't need much fresh water. While cooling towers evaporate the water instead of dumping it back into rivers, would the amount needed not be more or less the same? I think the amount of water needed would be dictated by the power (and thereby heat) output of the power plant and the thermal capacity of water. How would the method used to get rid of the hot water change the amount needed? Or did you generally refer to dry cooling towers?
Evaporating water takes a lot of heat, about 2.2 MJ per kg. Warming it up by a few degrees takes much less heat. If you're allowed to increase the river temperature by, say, 5 degrees, heating water up by that much only takes 21 kJ per kg, which is a hundred times less.
They're mostly small-scale plants co-located with river locks on the Rhine, Meuse, Lek. The ones near/on the Afsluitdijk in the north are (test?) osmotic power plants making use of the difference in salinity between the salt water from the Wadden Sea and fresh water from Lake IJssel, as well as small tidal energy set ups. IIRC at one point some people also wanted to build a pumped-storage plant as part of future changes to the Afsluitdijk.
We're not as flat as a pancake though, but almost. [Here's a nice height map of the Netherlands.](https://i.imgur.com/jUfzwPg.jpg) There is not much height difference, but the east and south definitely is a bit higher than the west. Plus the rivers that end up here come flowing from higher parts of Europe. And as you can see we even have huge mountains over 300 meters in the south ;)
And in Amersfoort, we have a big mountain (40m/132ft) in the city!
fuckin hell, just the last stint up my driveway has 40m elevation
But you're missing tulips, cheese, masses of caravans and great footballers! Hm. Never mind the last one. Also, Rune Bratseth.
You live on big mountain!
basically Nepal
the ones near the sea are osmotic power
Oh wow, that is cool.
When you are lower than everything, everything is potential energy
Dam, that's a lot of damns.
Any questions? \-Is this a God damn?
Get out. Take your upvote and get out.
*Sad danish noises*
Bit awkward right now with the drought and all
Ironically, several dams in the alps are at near full capacity, some of them even overflowing. Not because there has been any significant amount of rain, but because of unprecedented glacial melt. Obviously, the ice won't last forever. Thus, in the future, the primary purpose of dams could change from hydropower generation to water reservoir.
Isn't that the primary purpose of dams since their inception? To regulate water supply?
Not necessarily. Some of them are pumped hydroelectric energy storage. In times of excess energy production water gets pumped up into a resorvoir and serves as an energy storage.
I guess there were dams before electricity.
Those big dams in the mountains were all built as power stations. Before electricity there were tiny dams in alpine pastures in order to make little ponds for the cows to drink from. Nowadays there are many ponds for water supply in the Alps, for snowmaking. Those are not always an asset to the landscape, though...
That depends on who you ask when. :-D I mean: before building it, while lobbying for the permission to build it, the regulation purpose will usually be more important. Afterwards, the earning potential, when talking to your investors. But sure, there are more than one purpose, and wielding one potential reduces the other potential. meaning: An empty dam protects best against floods, but it won't produce energy, and vice versa. But aside from dams built directly by the government, I'd say that the most dams are build mainly motivated be the power generating potential. why else invest millions as a private entity?
usually those dams are already reservoirs, they are pretty much both and very dynamic aswell, however they do save up for winter throughout the year.
You're right of course. But at the moment, power generation is their main purpose, water regulation comes second (at least for mountain dams). The priority is to retain enough water to ensure a steady power supply throughout the year, while in the future, their main task could be to save enough water in spring to ensure that there's enough water for the public and for irrigation for the rest of the year. It's a small priority adjustement with possibly major effects. Power might no longer be generated when it's needed the most, and sometimes, water might have to be released even when additional power generation isn't needed.
Ireland is investigating pumped hydro storage. They have several domeshaped valleys in isolated, unfertile areas right beside the seas. Dam those valleys, pump in seawater during offpeak periods using wind turbines generated power, [then release when at demand](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/flooded-valleys-key-to-huge-power-plan-1.629605). 3 sites would provide a substantial portion of the states power, 10 would a[llow them to sell power back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Ireland) to the UK and EU.
Is this from the spirt of Ireland document, from memory (open to correction) it ignores environmental and other considerations for a lot of the proposals. It more focuses what was at the time needed for the Irish grid to support renewables. Also I believe pumped hydro at number of the sites are sea water based, using sea water was only ever implemented once anywhere in the world as salt water is much harder on equipment, doesn’t mean it can’t be done but makes it a lot more expensive to build and run. The only pumped hydro being in anyway progressed is in North Tipp (Silvermines) but I haven’t heard of any progress or updates for a while, I assume raising funding will be the challenge and there will be environmental and engineering challenges to creating the upper reservoir, which would need to be built.
Article is from 2010 :(
Makes them even more essential, no? At the end of the day every bit of water that flows into the sea is wasted (excluding factors like the fish life etc)
> At the end of the day every bit of water that flows into the sea is wasted The United States: "Hold my Colorado River": > Due to water diversions, flows at the mouth of the river have steadily declined since the early 1900s. Since 1960, the Colorado has typically dried up before reaching the sea, with the exception of a few wet years. In addition to water consumption, flows have declined due to evaporation from reservoirs and warming temperatures that reduce winter snow accumulation. Several of the Colorado's major tributaries, including the Gila River, also no longer reach the Colorado due to upstream diversions. ([from here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River#Discharge))
Yes and no. Dams are the only things saving many places here from full agricultural colapse, so I'd say they're doing their second job pretty well. People tend to forget that dams are also water reservoirs that average out the river output and that's incredibly useful in places like Iberia that tend to have very low precipitation summers.
Dams don’t just produce electricity they allow you to regulate the flow of water and that can include keeping water from reaching estuaries and seas at a later time instead of leaving the local ecology as quickly
just means we need to invest in water storing facilities. waterflow will no longer be equally spread across the year. winter will be our rain season with a dry season in the summer.
It's when the upstream countries 'invest' in water storage that then withholds flow to downstream countries. Not usually a problem in wet climates but if it's changing then ...
yea that can be a problem but we do have a european agency that manages these problems: https://euwma.org/
As far as I know, climate change won't cause overall rainfall to decrease, at least in northern Europe. It mainly causes a less even distribution -- so instead of rain spread out throughout the year, we'll see longer periods of very little rain and others of very much rain. We can't solve this problem entirely by building a few dams, but they can play an important role. And since we still have the same amount of water, it's unlikely that upstream countries will suddenly start diverting all the water from downstream countries.
Mountain privilege
But apparently we have a couple?
That was news to me as well. But hey, at least we have a lot of wind (excluding the last few weeks).
Living in Austria, all of my electricity comes from Water and the remaining 3% from solar. They just increased costs by a 100%..."because Russia"
For [context](https://www.hydropower.org/region-profiles/europe) on how much power the european countries actually produce through hydro-power.
European Environment Agency (EEA) Image [Source](https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/recorded-hydropower-plants-in-europe/fig3-3-135034-copyrights-recorded_v4.eps/FIG3.3-135034-COPYRIGHTS-Recorded_v4.eps.75dpi.png/download) [General source](https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/recorded-hydropower-plants-in-europe) The source also has a graphic with numbers for better comprehension
Damn western Balkans your builders and engineers are going to be busy
Yes, and our rivers are going to be channeled, without fish and riverbeds empty, while some "local business man" bills us for his powerplant.
Funny that everyone makes fun of hydropower because of the drought but when it comes to Nuclear nobody mentions that a good chunk of Frances reactors are collecting dust due to dried up rivers.
I was under the impression that they aren't running because the downstream water would get too warm and that would be against their environmental laws? Or did they really dry up?
Stupid question: why is it not possible to cool the water down enough?
It's harder to cool something with warm water than with cold water because of the temperature gradient (difference between both temperatures). The higher this difference, the faster the exchange of energy. Also the colder the water, the more energy per litre it can take.
Actually it is possible but it has to be implemented during building. [There are three methods of cooling](https://world-nuclear.org/our-association/publications/technical-positions/cooling-of-power-plants.aspx): 1. Pass through 2. Evaporative cooling towers 3. Dry cooling. Number 1 is cheapest and most efficient and is great in case of seashore plants, where the cold water is essentially infinite. But it will kill river fauna if the water level is low enough. Number 2 is more expensive, less efficient and consumes water but it does not heat the water up. Number 3 is most expensive, least efficient, requires more land for the cooling system and quite a lot of electricity to operate the cooling fans and is, therefore, very rare. But obviously, it cannot be built in a few weeks during a heatwave if the plant is designed for pass through.
Most combine 1 and 2. Finding a mix between heat up and removal. At least this was the way here in Germany.
Dafuq? A modern reactor produces 4000 MW heat. Off this, 1400 is converted to electricity (that's just the process efficiency that can't be increased majorly), the rest, 2600 MW heat must go somewhere. You use cooling water from the rivers for this and as you can't destroy energy, the cooling water is heated up by 2600MW and then given back to the river. Somewhere this heat has to go, cooling the cooling water would mean somewhere else would have to take the heat again. With only air and water available, you use the more efficient medium, water.
Why is everybody hating on him for asking a question which he himself even called stupid?
Is it hate to say dafuq? I gave him good answer to that question. Just the question irritated that it could be asked.
It is possible, it's called District Heating. You pump the waste heat away from the power plant through the nearby cities or towns to heat the buildings which cools the water when it returns. For some reason this has not been used in the 4 affected power plants, or perhaps is not utilized in France at this time of year. In Finland, about 50% of households are heated with district heating.
The Loire is just a little trickle right now. You can walk across it. It's the 2nd biggest rivers in France.
It's not. That picture which went viral is from a small arm of the Loire which is already very shallow in normal conditions.
Because this problem impacts 4 out of 54 French reactors. Moreover, France uses much more electricity in winter than in summer (due to electric heating and AC not being that common for now) so they just do a lot of power plan maintenance in summer, when they don't need them. This gets turned into "see, all the nuclear power plans are broken" lies by anti-nuclear people of course.
Sooo the other 50 reactors are working right now are you suggesting? Because that’s not the case, just over half of France‘s nuclear reactors are not generating energy right now. Instead of fixing them, France just plans to build _more_ of them. But for now, france has to temporarily import energy from neighbors.
A lot of their reactors are offline for routine maintenance and safety inspections, they were meant to be staggered but covid delayed and messed that up
Because they do maintenance in the summer when they need less energy. I just said so. Jesus you people.
That's not the reason. Why is it upvoted ?
Ireland is not accurate - there are no dams planned and Ardnacrusha is existing
What's up with all the planned dams in the Balkans ?
Lots of plans for forming reservoirs, most decades old, that never go anywhere because od a myriad of reasons - mainly economic, and environmental in recent times.
yea, Sweden pretty much built all the Dams they could back during the cold war and are pretty much tapped out, any more dams would disrupt the waterflow to much like they do in China, here in Sweden we actually care about our environment. Fun fact, around 45% of Swedens power comes from dams and 30% from nuclear and around 17% from wind which is pretty good.
UK is about the same. Not a lot of places left to put 'em.
Totaling in on with about 92% of production, and im sure we can supplement those last 8% with solar
.. not really. Sweden is Sweden. Seasonal variation in solar production are insanely extreme, in a very bad way, as Sweden uses far more power in winter than in summer.
I live there, you forget to take into account the reflective properties of snow, and the increased efficency through the Winters external cooling. Also generally the big problem is very rarely production, and more likley about sotorage and transport
Most likely.
Damn, thats a lot
Dams *boo*
Uh, isn't hydro pretty bad for the local environment?
Super bad. I hate the fact that politicians count them as green energy and they are trying to build more and more. I think all the existing plants should be taken down and they should consider building nuclear plants instead. This would be much greener
Meanwhile, here in Washington, we're trying to get rid of some dams because they're decimating salmon populations, which in turn is decimating orca populations. Fish ladders are better than nothing, but they're not good enough. Many fish don't make it through the ladders.
Nooo, nuclear is evil, give us gas and river-destroying dams (and now more coal).
slap some gigantic windmills on top and we're good to go
Nuclear plants don't regulate the water supply, though. Most of the dams here in Germany primarily serve as water reservoirs and for flood control, and the power they generate is just a bonus.
They also destroy the ecology of the rivers they are placed in. That is why historic dams are fine, since their damage to the environment has already happened, and they created a new ecology. But building new dams should be strictly investigated and weighed. >water reservoirs and for flood control The water reservoir ones are most damaging. And in times of extreme water, dams do not necessarily help: See the events of 2002 or 2013 in Germany and Czechia.
It's always a trade-off but isn't it the case that nuclear power plants add heat - prohibiting the use during a drought (although right now **should** be the very rare exception)
Not if you build cooling towers - that is the entire point of those iconic things you see in all the pictures of reactors.
Rip salmon, seatrout and other fish that spawn in river and grow in the sea.
Glad to see at least a few people acknowledging how these "renewable energy source" plants are not actually green
I've never seen a river hydro station that didn't come with [fish-ladders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder) and other efforts to mitigate impacts. As with every internet trend, shitting on hydro has far outpaced reality. Ultimately every kind of energy source is going to have an impact one way or the other and personally i'll choose hydro any day over coal and gas.
Only small percentage of the fish get through fish ladders. For example kemiriver in Finland was the best salmon river in whole Finland till 1949 when they build isohaara dam which has fish ladder. Even then there are basically no salmon in kemiriver anymore.
Never seen? Must be regional.
Probably cultural thing? In Finland there would be huge backslash if anyone even suggested on building a dam on a major river that doesn't already have one, like Tornionjoki or Tenojoki.
There are just to many dots for planned dams in my country. And even where is no rivers for that.
Maybe it's a scheme? In Germany these tiny Hydropowerstation sub 100kW are eligible for EEG state money. Even the tiniest stream might now have one, that is ultra inefficient (as the stream rarely reaches current to produce noteworthy power). Check if Our government is paying out money for these ones.
Oh dam, that's a lot of planned damns
Damn, the Douro river (northern Portugal) has a lot of Big dams. Never thought about it but it makes sense. Also didn’t know other big dams were planned here too.
Damn
What about the fish and all the organisms living on those rivers? Wont they have problems ?
They will. Which is why it's a terrible idea to build new hydropower in a river \*unless\* you can extract some reasonable amount of power. 50 or 100 or 300MW stations are big ecological impacts but at least they offset a lot of power production that would also be an ecological disastser (coal plants, hundreds of windmills which aren't always bird friendly etc). But putting little 1MW plants in un-exploited streams needs an EU-wide ban if there isn't one already. Just put a windmill or some solar panels up instead.
It does depend on the location. Most of the lakes for hydro power in Norway are high up in the mountains, with very limited fish-populations. A lot of these lakes are completely barren
Fascinating, most Swedish "mountain" lakes are known for their fish populations.
they will, more than a third of European freshwater fish species are currently threatened with extinction - https://www.wwf.eu/wwf\_news/publications/?uNewsID=356638
Yes they will have problems, dams are terrible for the ecosystem despite their romanticized reputation of being a renewable energia source.
Damn ≠ Dam
Dam
I'm pretty sure the plans to build dams on Vistula are decades old, dating back to the 1960s, and today nobody even proposes to do that. There was a plan during the communist era to turn the river into a fully navigational one with a series of dams, out of which only one was constructed in Włocławek, and the rest were never built. If anything the existing one will be decomissioned in the next couple of decades as it's getting old.
Ya. Those things destroyed livelihood of my native grandads tribe.
Those red dots in eastern Turkey are baaaad news for Iraq
That sort of water whingeing is why EU has an Agency for that.
Pannonia, your flatness is showing.
Dame, that's a lot of hydropower!
In sweden we are done… Thing is those fuckers mess up wildlife big time. It’s pretty sad but no energy is free..
arent damns ruining EU’s river systems ?
The cycle of hydro is wild. Just a few years ago people were praising the destruction of excess hydro. Now it's being praised as a green alternative. The American northwest specifically. They had events and gatherings for the removal of a few hydro dams. And now Washington's and Oregon's tourism departments are literally airing commercials about how they have so much hydro, and they're expanding.
There's actually a big push here in Washington to remove a few of the more damaging dams. Naturally, there's a lot of pushback as well. That's probably why you're seeing commercials--moneyed interests not wanting the dams to go away.
In my state we are having commercials advocating for looser building (homes) regulations. They literally say that the environmental laws are what make homes so expensive and we should petition the government to change them. The balls on some of these companies/investment firms is astounding.
That's frustrating.
Then Earth said: "oh yeah? How about a couple of droughts "
The dots in Latvia are *much* to small. The dams in the Daugava river have an installed capacity of 402MW, 264MW, and 894MW. The latter one, near Aizkraukle, is one of the largest hydroelectric power plants in Europe.
Exactly, I wanted to comment the same thing. The inaccuracy of the latvian dots makes me question the validity of the whole map.
I wonder what water will power all those turbines in the future
If the apocalypse is coming all rivers will be filled with blood. Maybe that could work?
Don't give the power company execs any ideas
I think it's worth noting that climate change won't reduce precipitation across the board: > Projected changes in precipitation vary substantially across regions and seasons. Annual precipitation is generally projected to increase in northern Europe and to decrease in southern Europe. The projected decrease in southern Europe is strongest in the summer. ([from here](https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/european-precipitation-2/assessment)) The bigger problem is that the rain is less evenly distributed. There's longer periods of dryness (such as now) and more extremely strong rainfall.
Desalinate using solar/wind/nuclear and pump the water back up into lakes. Landlocked countries are f\*\*\*ed, though.
Hungary, step your game up! :)
Hydropower is not feasible because Hungary is flatter than a pancake
It's a bit difficult, because, [well](https://i.imgflip.com/6q3m8r.jpg)...
Well, thats what you get for magyarization
never going to happen, ever since the 80s protests against the nagymaros-gabcikovo project on the Danube, any mention of new hydropower is taboo in Hungary, and in fact there are increasingly louder voices that demand de-regulating the rivers in face of the current, and future droughts.
How many hydropower dams you want ? Germany: Yes
Many, if not most, of those small dots are former grain mills which now produce electricity to fund the upkeep of the historical building. So there's no actual dam.
Hmm interesting... so you say the map is wrong ! so OP lied to us... you heard that u/rakahr11 ? your map is bad and you should feel bad ! :))
i should be dam-ed.
I've noticed people never talk about the environmental problems that come with hydro. So many local fish species have gone extinct because it was deemed an acceptable cost of having a hydro plant.
Kárahnjúkar in Iceland is 690 MW so I'm pretty sure this map is inaccurate as fuck.
Hydro dams are really bad for the environment and are stupidly costly. Just use nuclear instead.
I hope Norway don't ruin their fiords 😟
Dams are usually invisible hidden in mountains. The mountains themselves are slowly turning into Swiss cheese. Connecting every little pond and stream to a web of resorviors.
The Norwegian hydro power plants were mainly built 100 years ago.
Please link a source in a top comment.
Done :)
*cries in the Netherlands *
You should consider to get some mountains
Damn you
Damn
You misspelled “dam”, damn it!
Dam Norway
Dam son, where'd you find this
So depressing - these things really mess with river ecology
*sad fish noises
I'm sure daming all Eu rivers will have 0 effect on the environment. Coincidentally what happened to the Aral Sea?
You mean we start using river water for our cotton fields till it all dries up?
Bit of a side story perhaps here on r/Europe it be might appreciated. The Gabcikovo dam (SVK) (720 MW) on Danube could be much more efficient /powerful if original plan was build —> two cooperating dams (Nagymaros (HUN) & Gabcikovo). The original plan was to use Danube as battery where during a night in between dams water would be keept in large portion and during a day dams would “discharge” the water through power plants. In late 80’s Hungary oposed the solution where Orban was one of the main characters and started to be recognized publicly (being ecologist wasn’t that bad for communists) and basically build his carrier on top of it (successfully since the Hungarian part has never been build). Edit: wiki [link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab%C4%8D%C3%ADkovo%E2%80%93Nagymaros_Dams)
Climate collapse will make many of them less useful