From the Paper titled “RECENT TRENDS IN RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES: HYDRO POWER A SUSTAINABLE OPTION ” presented by our MD , Mr. Kanti Prasad at the all India Seminar on “Renewable Energy for Sustainable Development” organized by Institution of Engineers (I), Ghaziabad Chapter on 27-28 July 2018
ABSTRACT
Today worldwide the focus is on renewable energy (RE) with the objective of reducing dependency on fossil fuel due to compelling environmental concerns, growing demand and rising price of electric energy. India has set a fabulous target of achieving 175 GW of RE by 2022. This includes 60 GW of large and medium-scale grid connected solar power projects, 60 GW of wind, 40 GW of solar rooftop projects, and 10 GW of bio-power and 5 GW of small hydro. Hydroelectric, which is a renewal energy source depending upon natural water has tremendous potential in India. It’s considered as a primary source of sustainable power supply. This paper presents the current status of hydro power and underlines the need of its development as a sustainable option for meeting India’s huge demand of electric power. The illustrations in this write up show the shares of various power sources in India and worldwide.
Key words: Renewable energy, hydro power, sustainable energy,
Introduction
Hydro power has a long history of over 2000 years. It has come to present state through stages of evolution of technology, from a water wheel to high power generators. With the advancing technologies hydro power plants are capable of generating large power output with higher efficiency. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) hydro power is the most flexible source of electric power generation to meet the base load and peak demand, and is capable of responding to demand fluctuations in a short time sequence. Hydro power constitutes 80% of the global renewable energy and it produces around 16% of total electricity throughout the world. [2] It has significant future potential, based on its continued development in a sustainable framework. Solar, Wind and other form of renewable energy such as biomass, have significant place in power development programme of developing countries like India. These renewable energy sources being variable by nature require integrating facilities to deliver firm power effectively into the electricity network. Hydro power, in particular the reservoir and pumped storage schemes is an ideal provider of sustainable energy on large scale economically. Hydro power has two vital features one, storage capacity and two, fast response characteristics, which distinguish it from other renewable energy sources, are valuable to meet the critical requirement of supporting the grid during sudden fluctuations in electricity demand.
The importance of hydro power is clearly reflected in the “Implementing Agreement for A Cooperative Program on Hydro power Technologies and Program (as amended to 21 March 2006)” of The International Energy Agency (IEA). Quote: “Hydroelectric power is by far the most important renewable resource that electric utilities have in place, accounting for roughly one-fifth of total electricity production in the world as a whole. Yet significant opportunities remain for further hydro power development, both through maintenance, refurbishment and upgrading of facilities in place and through selective construction of new facilities, especially in developing countries which possess abundant hydro potential”. India is endowed with tremendous hydro potential. Despite its many advantages and availability of emerging technologies, hydro power’s growth in India is far behind the given target. Hydro power has become extremely questionable in some quarters due to certain aspects of hydro projects especially, the implementation impacting the environment, and lack of proper approach in addressing the various issues involved in implementation, both on the part of the state and promoters.