Hydroelectric power water use | Space4Water Portal

"The use of water in the generation of electricity at plants where the turbine generators are driven by falling water." (U.S. Geological Survey, 2019)

Sources

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). "Water Science Glossary Terms". USGS Water Science School. (2019). Link: https://water.usgs.gov/edu/dictionary.html#W

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Event

10th International Symposium on Hydraulic Structures (ISHS) 2024

Hydraulic structures are and will be a vital part of the infrastructure for human beings as they provide safe irrigation and water supply, protection against natural hazards, energy generation, and many other highly needed services. Given the current global challenges including water scarcity, abundance in the form of floods, need for clean and affordable energy and environmental issues related to watercourses as biodiversity hotspots, hydraulic structures will remain very relevant in the future.

15th International Symposium on River Sedimentation (ISRS)

The International Symposium on River Sedimentation (ISRS) is a triennial event initiated in 1980 by the Chinese Hydraulic Engineering Society (CHES) with the support of UNESCO. The objective of ISRS is to provide a forum for scientist, engineers, researchers and decision makers to exchange ideas, research results, advanced techniques, and to share their experiences and information on sediment study and management. The International Research and Training Center on Erosion and Sedimentation (IRTCES) in Beijing is the permanent secretariat of ISRS.

The 40th IAHR World Congress in Vienna, Austria 2023

The 40th IAHR World Congress in Vienna, Austria, from August 21st to 25th, 2023.

The main theme of the 40th IAHR World Congress will be “Rivers – Connecting Mountains and Coasts” focusing attention on the importance of considering the integral water cycle to address present and future challenges.

5th Worlds Large Rivers Conference

The central theme of the World’s Large Rivers Conference 2023 is

"Rivers in a Changing World".

The pressures and impacts on the World’s Large Rivers have increased greatly in recent years. Large rivers are particularly exposed to problems of multiple uses, often with conflicting aims. At the global scale, there is no comprehensive assessment of the current status of the World’s Large Rivers, the conflicting demands on such rivers, and likely future anthropogenic impacts, as well as the potential for restoration and the associated problems.

Local Perspectives Case Studies

Potential consequences due to the melting Athabasca glacier, Canada

The Athabasca glacier is our source of water and it is being reduced significantly because of climate change. We need to understand what is the data showing from the increases in temperature due to climate change, will the melting glacier increase more water loading in the Athabasca River, will that cause more flooding and at what point will we have no more glacier? What are the future predictions for the glacier as our source water? This information we will enable us to make a decision on whether we need to relocate or not. On the Peace River side, there are three hydroelectric projects, and we are talking to the companies to see if they can release water in the delta. But we need data to understand how much water they can release in the delta without causing flooding in the other areas. For example, how much water need released and in which season in order to have a healthy ecosystem downstream. Another set of data that will be useful is about landform stability. For example, tailings ponds are built to international dam standards, so if there are landform changes there could be consequences of tailings breach where the tailings will basically give out the dam will fail. We need digital topography modelling to understand what will happen in cases where tailing breach and how catastrophic that event will be.

Need for water quality data to monitor effects of mining and industrial use of water near Lake Athabasca, Canada

The community is nestled on the northwest shore of Lake Athabasca and downstream of tar sands/mining extraction and hydroelectric dams. The challenge the community faces is the lack of data on the industry water use and how that is or will affect the community in the future. There is a need for data that will help with informed decision making for active stewardship and monitoring. We have estimated that it will cost about 17 billion dollars in liability if reclamation and remediation is not done to bring back the boreal ecosystem. Therefore, we need data to aid in decision-making and adaptive management to determine whether the current management practices and solutions are effectively working. This could be data on biodiversity, for example of benthic vertebrates to access the health of the water ecosystems and also water quality. Currently we do not have such data. Right now, they are doing progressive reclamation where they are revegetating as they are mining but we cannot evaluate whether this is successful or not. We do not know if the species they are using for revegetation are improving environmental quality or not. We need to develop criteria to determine the success of reclamation by evaluating if specified targets are met with a particular time period and if these are not met then identify what could be done differently – adaptative management.

Stakeholder

Satsense Solutions Limited

Satsense Solutions Limited is a start-up company that uses satellite earth observation to develop business and governance solutions addressing the challenges of resource management, climate change and sustainable development. It has developed and deployed several applications in the Water Resources, Hydropower, Mining and Infrastructure sectors. These include assessments of eutrophication levels in lakes and reservoirs and sedimentation rates at hydropower plants. Identification of pollution in rivers, acid mine drainage and tailings at mining sites.