How Energy Is Produced - The Renaissance of Renewable Energy - page 80

Figure 4.5. The Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric plant on the Yangtze River in China.
With a capacity of 22,500 megawatts, it is by far the largest power plant in the world.
Source: Le Grand Portage at Wikimedia Commons.
Despite the conspicuous existence of giants like the Three Gorges Dam, the vast
majority of hydroelectric plants are small in scale (within the European Union alone
there are more than 20,000 small hydropower plants) 4 . Small hydro tends to serve a rural
community or a single industrial plant. The major advantages of such plants is that they
can be built in isolated areas that are not connected to the grid and have environmental and
social impacts that are negligible compared with large-scale schemes.
In Rangkhani, a remote mountain region of western Nepal, life revolves, as it has done
for centuries, around subsistence farming and cottage industry. In 2001, a 26-kilowatt
micro-hydro project transformed daily life in Rangkhani by providing electricity to more
than 1,000 people, their their homes and small enterprises. Local incomes and educational
opportunities have increased, while health impacts from dirty kerosene lanterns have fallen
(Pottinger 2012 ; Yee 2012 ). Such schemes, with a capacity of less than 100 kilowatts, are
referred to as micro-hydro plants.