Hydroelectric Power Plants and River Morphodynamic Processes

Abstract

Hydropower is one of the renewable energy sources. Hydropower plants generate electricity using the kinetic energy of flowing water. Although hydroelectric power plants are not as prominent as solar or wind farms, it should be noted that they generate the most significant amount of the power. They are also the most technically advanced projects. Power plants are built with different technical parameters of turbines, different sizes of dams or weirs and different ways of exploiting the energy of flowing water. A common feature, however, is the significant impact of hydroelectric power plants on the functioning of adjacent regions. The paper divides this impact into economic and local development, landscape, and ecological functions, emphasizing the interaction of these influences. The paper discusses the hydromorphological changes taking place in the immediate vicinity of the structure, as a consequence of channel development. The processes of aggradation and degradation of the channel are the answer to hydrodynamic equilibrium loss. These hydrodynamic processes are associated with the subsequent ecological response of the habitat. The most important of these include the dynamic equilibrium loss by the river and the subsequent morphological parameters striving to restore it according to Lane’s relation, known as the most important principle in the fluvial morphology science. The impact of the hydropower plant on the fluvial environment results, first of all, from a significant environmental impact of the damming of the river itself. If the structure is correctly designed, maintained, and operated, it allows controlling the water conditions upstream and downstream with simultaneous energy production. Due to several geometric, hydraulic, and granulometric changes, and further, the resultant economic, landscape, and natural changes that significantly affect the operation of a region, these should be considered as early as the design stage and should be an integral part of any hydroelectric project.