Largest Hydroelectric Dam In Us
The Biggest Dam?!?!? help?
The Grand Coulee dam in Washington State is the largest concrete structure and the largest hydroelectric power station in the US, third largest in the world. The hydraulic height is 116 m and the average release is 3100 m3/s. The average power generation is 21 billion kilowatt hours per year (21000 GWh/yr) according to the official web page.
What’s the efficiency of converting gravitational potential energy of water into electricity? Remember that 1 L of water has a mass of 1 kg.
density of water at 20C = 0.998 g/cm³ = 998 kg/m³
take 1 second
3100 m³ of water falls 116 m
3100 m³ x 998 kg/m³ = 3090000 kg
3090000 kg x 9.8 = 3.03e7 Newtons
Energy is 3.03e7 x 116 = 3.52e9 Joules
Since this happens every second, the power is 3.52e9 J/s or 3.52e9 Watts
converting energy output to J/s
21000e9 watt-hour/year x 1yr/8766 hr = 2.40e9 watt-hr/hr = 2.40e9 watts
So the efficiency is 2.40/3.52 = 68.2%
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Deriner Dam (Artvin,Turkey) – Build it Bigger – Danny Forster
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Gravel Mitigation and Augmentation Below Hydroelectric Dams: A Geomorphological Perspective $6.99 In many salmon-bearing Pacific coast gravel-bed rivers, closure of hydroelectric dams cut off gravel supply to streambeds below. Gravel mining and changes in the post-dam flow regime further disturbed the streams, leaving them in a geomorphologically and biologically dysfunctional state. Habitat for spawning and other salmon life stages became severely degraded, and salmon populations drastically … |