Hydropower Plants –Wet Energy - Renewable Energy and Climate Change - page 199

storage power plants to be built in the mountains (Figure 9.10). A high-pressure
pipeline pumps the water into a machine house, where, due to the large head, enor-
mous water pressure of up to 200 bars is created. In the machine house water powers
the turbines that produce energy over an electric generator.

Figure 9.10 Storage power plants with reservoirs: Malta (left), Kaprun in Austria (right). Source:
www.verbund.at.

It is not unusual to fi nd dams over 100 m high. The highest dams on earth are over
300 m high. Reservoirs are often also used to store drinking water and to control
fl ooding.
Storage power plants that are designed primarily to generate electricity have very
high power output. Power plants that produce several hundred or even thousand
megawatts are not unusual (Table 9.1).

Table 9.1 The largest hydroelectric power plants in the world.

Power plant Country River Completed Power

output
in MW

Dam
length
in m

Dam
height
in m

Three Gorges
Dam

China Yangtse 2009 18 200 2310 180

Itaipú Brazil/

Paraguay

Paraná 1983 14 000 7760 196

Guri Venezuela Rio Caroni 1986 10 300 1300 162

Tucuruí Brazil Rio Tocantins 1984 7 960 6900 78

Grand Coulee USA Columbia River 1942 6 495 1592 168