The history of hydro

An ActewAGL worker looking at ActewAGL’s mini-hydroelectric generator.

The word hydro comes from the Greek word meaning water.

People have used water to assist them with many tasks since at least 200 BC. Water wheels with buckets or paddles attached were used for milling grain and driving saw mills.

The first water wheel used to generate electricity began operation in 1882 in the USA. More power plants were built shortly after this at Niagara Falls in the USA.

An increasing demand for electricity generation led to the building of more dams to provide a reliable and constant flow of water to the turbines.

In Australia the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme was begun in 1950 with the goal of damming rivers in the high alpine country of New South Wales to create a network of hydroelectricity plants. This scheme took 25 years to complete at a cost of $820 million. It consists of 16 dams, seven generating plants and 145km of tunnels and pipes.

ActewAGL operates a mini hydro-generating plant at the Mount Stromlo Water Treatment Plant. It uses an existing water supply – the gravity pipe from Bendora Dam to the Mount Stromlo reservoir. Corin and Bendora dams were already in existence to supply Canberra’s water, so there were no additional environmental impacts involved.

The clean, green energy from the Stromlo mini-hydro plant in the ACT saves over 3,600 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year by supplying electricity that would otherwise come from fossil fuel power stations.

The mini-hydro plant does not run constantly. Its operations are affected by dam water levels and the demand for water in Canberra.

In Australia, hydro generation provides 59.0 petajoules (PJ) of electricity. The Australian government continues to support the establishment of hydro projects and it is expected that the output of hydro will increase to 64.1 PJ by 2019–20. (Source: Bureau of Agriculture resource economics: Energy Report 2004)