eli5: the UK is an island but we tend to talk about solar and wind power, how come we don’t seem to push for hydro power?
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Modern forms of hydro power mostly rely on the flow of rivers, so the extra coastline doesn’t really help with that. There are forms of wave or tide-based hydro power in the works, but the technology and economics aren’t quite ready yet for use on a large scale.
Ahh thanks guys, I didn’t really think about movement of water … I thought tides would be powerful enough
usually hydropower is best used when you have mountains/height difference, so it might be a thing in Scottland but not for England itself.
TIDAL power generators are – to my knowledge – in an earlier development stage but might be more what you’re looking for. These use essentially the power of waves/tide to generate electricity.
Because wave/tidal power is in its early infancy and barely usable, just some early unreliable prototypes. Years away from anything that could be considered widely deployable.
Classic hydro requires deep valleys and a significant flow volume. UK has some hydro in Wales and Scotland, but most of it is too flat, doesn’t have suitable river volumes in the valleys that do exist, they’re occupied or a combination.
What the UK has a lot of is the extremely windy but quite shallow North Sea coastline, perfect for large, efficient wind farms.
Well hydro power usually mean hydroelectric power plant, which are build on rivers. So the fact that UK is an island doesn’t influence this at all.
But if we talk about coastal hydro, then tidal power could be what you mean. Well this is a relatively new industry and they are doing a lot of testing right now for the impact. It’s always harder to so stuff underwater, compared to solar or wind which is on the surface.
Here a (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIYA6Jwwp4s) talking about the subject. There is good potential with the tech, it just need more time to develop before it start to spread and then we will see more talk about it.
Britain is an island, not UK. Northern Ireland (UK) is on an all-Ireland grid.
But 100% there should be a push on both islands on hydro and offshore wind too.
Cos hydro power just kinda sucks in comparison. It can be done, but we can also just build wind farms in the ocean, which do the job – generating power from unused offshore space – much more efficiently. That being said, we do still have tidal power generators.
Hydroelectric relies on the exitence of rivers with enough flow to be tapped. the nature of how it works also limits how many Dams you can have in any one river before the river’s flow is negatively impacted. this issue is doubled as says Dams also double as reservoirs.
tldR: there is a hard limit on how many hydroelectric plants any one river can sustain.
there is a such a thing as tidal hydroeletric plants but they need a set of conditions not all coastline has as the tech is still somewhat in its infancy.
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