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In-stream turbines for rethinking hydropower development in the Amazon basin

Nature Sustainability volume 4, pages 680–687 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Given growing energy demands and continued interest in hydropower development, it is important that we rethink hydropower to avoid detrimental socioenvironmental consequences of large dams planned in regions such as the Amazon River basin. Here, we show that ~63% of total energy planned to be generated from conventional hydropower in the Brazilian Amazon could be harnessed using in-stream turbines that use kinetic energy of water without requiring storage. At five of the nine selected planned dam sites, the entirety of energy from planned hydropower could be generated using in-stream turbines by using only a fraction of the river stretch that large dams would affect. We find the cost (US$ kWh−1) for in-stream turbines to be ~50% of the conventional hydropower cost. Our results have important implications for sustainable hydropower development in the Amazon and worldwide through transition to power generation methods that meet energy needs while minimizing the negative socioenvironment impacts.

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Fig. 1: Hydropower potential in the Amazon.
Fig. 2: Suitability indices for in-stream turbines in the Brazilian Amazon.
Fig. 3: Comparison of costs for conventional hydropower and in-stream turbines.

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Data availability

All input datasets used in the analyses are publicly available from the cited references. Processed data required to reproduce the figures in the main text are available on CUAHSI HydroShare and Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13366118).

Code availability

All figures were produced using the freely available visualization libraries in Python 3.5 (such as Matplotlib). The relevant portions of the computer code used to process the results and develop the figures are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4382186.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the funding from the National Science Foundation (INFEWS, award no. 1639115 and CAREER, award no. 1752729) and the Environmental Science and Policy Program (ESPP) at Michigan State University. Model simulations were conducted at Cheyenne (https://doi.org/10.5065/D6RX99HX) provided by NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory sponsored by the National Science Foundation. None of these agencies or funding sources should be held responsible for the views herein. They are the sole responsibility of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Suyog Chaudhari & Yadu Pokhrel

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Erik Brown, Raul Quispe-Abad & Norbert Müller

  3. Department of Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Emilio Moran

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Contributions

Y.P. and S.C. designed the research framework. S.C. conducted numerical simulations and S.C. and Y.P. analysed the results. S.C., E.B., R.Q.-A., Y.P. and N.M. developed the mathematical framework for the estimation of in-stream hydropower potential and cost comparison. E.M. contributed intellectually to the implementation of the project. S.C. prepared all graphics. All authors discussed and interpreted the results. S.C. and Y.P. wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed, commented on and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yadu Pokhrel.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Sustainability thanks Simone Athayde and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–8, Tables 1–3 and references.

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Chaudhari, S., Brown, E., Quispe-Abad, R. et al. In-stream turbines for rethinking hydropower development in the Amazon basin. Nat Sustain 4, 680–687 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00712-8

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