Small hydro is the development of hydroelectric power on a scale serving a small community or industrial plant. The definition of a small hydro project varies, but a generating capacity of up to 10 megawatts (MW) is generally accepted as the upper limit, which aligns to the concept of distributed generation.
Small hydro plants may be connected to conventional electrical distribution networks as a source of low-cost renewable energy. Alternatively, small hydro projects may be built in isolated areas that would be uneconomic to serve from a network, or in areas where there is no national electrical distribution network. Since small hydro projects usually have minimal reservoirs and civil construction work, they are seen as having a relatively low environmental impact compared to large hydro. This decreased environmental impact depends strongly on the balance between stream flow and power production. One tool that helps evaluate this issue is the Flow Duration Curve or FDC. The FDC is a Pareto curve of a stream’s daily flow rate vs. frequency. Reductions of diversion help the river’s ecosystem, but reduce the hydro system’s Return on Investment (ROI). The hydro system designer and site developer must strike a balance to maintain both the health of the stream and the economics.
Plants with reservoir, i.e. small storage and small pumped-storage hydropower plants, can contribute to distributed energy storage and decentralized peak and balancing electricity. Such plants can be built to integrate at the regional level intermittent renewable energy sources.
A hydropower resource can be evaluated by its available power. Power is a function of the hydraulic head and rate of fluid flow. The head is the energy per unit weight (or unit mass) of water. The static head is proportional to the difference in height through which the water falls. Dynamic head is related to the velocity of moving water. Each unit of water can do an amount of work equal to its weight times the head.
The power available from falling water can be calculated from the flow rate and density of water, the height of fall, and the local acceleration due to gravity. In SI units, the power is
where
- P is power in watts
- is the dimensionless efficiency of the turbine
- is the density of water in kilograms per cubic metre
- Q is the flow in cubic metres per second
- g is the acceleration due to gravity
- h is the height difference between inlet and outlet in metres
