This for example: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Cataratas.jpg
If you don’t want to click the link, it’s the Iguazu Falls, Argentina and Brazil Border.
It’s basically a huge waterfall. To my understanding, it generates enormous amount of potential power, meanwhile every water power station I’ve seen is either flow of river or a dam. Could we not put a water wheel next to the waterfall or something?
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It’s not conceptually difficult. Dredge or blast a channel a ways upstream, where the river channel is deeper. Then build a penstock and a pipeline overland to the bottom of the falls. Build a powerhouse some ways below the falls on a location where erosion isn’t a big concern.
Because waterfalls are naturally prone to heavy erosion, you wouldn’t want to make use of the falls themselves. Nevermind the issues with constructing turbine works in the path of the falls. That would probably require flow to be diverted around the falls anyway Merely the fact that you have a large source of water travelling over a rapid drop in elevation is what you care about with regards to hydropower.
The downside of this is that if there’s a drought and the river flow becomes low enough, you can either stiff your electricity customers and say “sorry, power will only be on 8 hours of the day, or you run the risk of needing to bypass all the river flow around the falls and shutting them off completely.
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