1.2 billion
Population requiring electricity access
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210,000
Mini-grids; mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa
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$220 billion
Investment needed to achieve SDG7
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Clean Affordable Reliable
Kinetic Hydro river turbines provide baseload power generation for off-grid locations.
They improve affordability of solar mini-grids by slashing the cost of battery storage systems.
A diversity of power generation technologies creates a more reliable system.
The flow of water in the world’s rivers provides a huge kinetic energy resource that is currently untapped but can be captured to generate electricity. This hydro-kinetic power, associated with the speed of the water, is not the same as conventional hydropower which is based on the potential energy of the water in lakes and rivers dropping through a height.
Conventional Hydropower harnesses the potential energy of water in lakes and rivers by letting that water drop through a height (head).
Hydro-kinetic turbines capture the kinetic energy associated with the velocity of the water flowing in the river.
River turbines provide clean, affordable power and improve the economics of de-centralised electricity systems:
- Generate continuous baseload power, including in the evening when it is needed most.
- Substantially reduces the requirements for battery storage which are the most expensive part of a solar mini-grid.
- Very high capacity factor that can approach 100% in ideal conditions. River turbines can harvest more than 4 times as much energy as solar panels of the same rating because they generate 24/7.
- Uses the same electrical architectures and Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) inverters as PV systems allowing them to be plugged into solar hybrid mini-grids. They can be operated and maintained by the same personnel.
- The turbines are rugged and reliable. Their direct drive technology is straightforward with little to go wrong. They can be maintained by local service technicians with basic training and facilities.
- Turbines can be transported and installed quickly without any specialist equipment.
- Cost of power is competitive with other de-centralised renewable energy technologies including solar and (conventional) micro-hydro power (MHP).
- Does not require the costly civil engineering structures of conventional hydro-power.