New projects | The NEEWa project
Hof University’s NEEWa project has been developed to promote the use of hydropower in existing water systems. Report by Nirupama Nair and Dr Harvey Harbach
IN THE FIRST HALF of 2022, renewable energy produced 48.5% of Germany’s electrical power1
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out of which 3.2% was generated by hydropower, a 0.5% decrease from the previous year. The potential for electricity generation from hydropower is far from exhausted. Of particular interest is the relatively ecologically harmless energy potential that anthropogenic water structures such as sewage treatment plants, canal networks and aquaculture systems contain, that has not yet been utilized due to a lack of knowledge-transfer among the various stakeholders, and the need for further research.
The NEEWa project – goals and methods
References
1. Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis). (2022, September 7). Electricity production in the 1st half of 2022: coal- generated electricity up 17.2% on the same period a year earlier. Retrieved September 12, 2022, from Statistisches Bundesamt
(Destatis):
https://www.destatis. de/EN/Press/2022/09/
PE22_374_43312.html;jsessio nid=7693AD72396F80049C5
DE35C02F47944.live721
In July 2021, the project NEEWa – Network for the Generation of Energy with Hydropower in Existing Water Systems – funded by the European Social Fund (ESF), was launched to facilitate and strengthen the transfer of knowledge from Green-Tech University Hof to regional companies in order to further expand the use of hydropower for the generation of renewable energy in Bavaria, Germany. The biggest bottlenecks to increased hydropower utilization in water structures is the potential impact on the ecology of the environment. NEEWa aims to promote the use of hydropower in existing water structures through ecologically harmless framework conditions by bringing together stakeholders from across the entire value chain – from operators, project developers and planners to manufactures of components of hydropower plants. The field of participants is broadly diversified and also includes owners of pond farms, employees of public utilities, tanneries, shareholders of community powerplants such that the expertise of the network is wide-ranged. In addition, a decision support tool is also to be developed that supports planning for modernisation, revitalisation, as well as the new construction of a hydropower plant, and also provides information on technical possibilities and legal framework conditions. The early objective was to identify the greatest obstacle to hydropower use in Germany. This was done through guideline-based interviews, tailored to the respective group of participants, where they answered about their know-how, challenges faced in planning and construction, as well as expectations from the network. The legal framework conditions associated with hydropower was clearly named
by the interviewees as the greatest challenge. The procedures took several years, even up to ten years, in some cases. Hence, an equally important aspect for all participants was to use the network to redesign, simplify and speed up the approval procedures. A licensing system with clearly defined requirements for technology, feed-in and ecological impact could help here. In addition, the negative public image of hydropower in Germany and the high requirements in nature conservation and water protection hindered their further expansion. Furthermore, the licensing procedure in the federal states is not uniform, and in some cases, there is contradictory information on prerequisites, and ecological requirements are not precisely defined. Low economic efficiency, especially for plants below 50kW, high costs of expert opinions, investment costs, and the associated difficulty of financing were cited as obstacles and barriers to hydropower.
Information from stakeholders The operators stated that discharge quantities
ranged from 1.5 to 2500 L/sec and usable heads were between 1 and 35m. Water wheels, Ossberger turbines, Kaplan and Francis turbines, among others, are used. The output of the turbines used ranges from 2 to 15,000kW. Combinations of water volume and head vary greatly, which in turn results in the use of different technologies. The inability to find suitable technical solutions to existing conditions (water quantity and/or head) hindered the development of a hydropower plant. Half of the project developers participating in the
project so far are exclusively regional, the other half are active in Germany and worldwide. They see the potential for new hydropower plants primarily in anthropogenic areas such as ponds and sewage treatment plants, as well as in existing transverse structures (sluices) and rainwater retention basins. By modernising existing plants, their yield could be doubled in some cases. In terms of ecological compatibility, hydropower is more likely to survive through modernisation than through new construction. The manufacturers represented produce Francis,
Author details
Nirupama Nair and Dr. Harvey Harbach, Institute for Water and Energy Management at Hof University. Email:
harvey.harbach@hof-university.de, Tel: +49 9281 409-4591
Kaplan, Ossberger, Pelton, Propeller and variable- speed semi-axial turbines, as well as water wheels and hydroelectric screws, which are used in river, doping, gas and small hydroelectric power plants. The power range of these plants is between 0.1kW and 5MW with heads of 0.8 to 180 m and a minimum water flow of 8 L/sec. Most of the respondents here estimate the share of hydropower in the business model as large.
Further steps The further course of the project aimed to support the members of the network in overcoming these
18 | November 2022 |
www.waterpowermagazine.com
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