How Much Energy Do Hydro Water Plants Produce in 2 Months?

Power Generation

• The power in hydro water plants is created through the construction of a dam. Dams are built on rivers where there are naturally occurring changes in elevation. The water builds up behind the dam and then the plant operators allow it to flow through a channel when they need to generate power. Here, it pushes turbine blades, which force electromagnets to circulate inside a conductor, generating the electricity.

Grand Coulee

• Not all hydro plants produce the same amount of power. The Grand Coulee plant is considerably bigger than other plants in the country, but it gives an idea of the scale of power that can be achieved with hydro electric energy. In an hour, the plant is capable of generating 6,809 megawatts. Although it is unlikely that the dam would run at full capacity for two months straight, if it did it could generate in excess of 9 million megawatts of power.

Typical Hydro Power Production

• Most of the other large hydro projects in the United States are much smaller than the dam at Grand Coulee. Other examples of large and powerful hydro stations include the Chief Joseph and John Day hydroelectric power stations, both of which are located on the Columbia river. These both produce slightly more than one-third of the power that Grand Coulee is capable of producing over a two month span.

Consumption

• It is estimated that an average household consumes somewhere between 3 and 4 megawatts of energy in a year. That means that a hydro water plant the size of John Day would, over the course of two months, generate enough power to supply approximately a million homes for a year. Power consumption varies between households, however, and the hydro water plants often don't produce at maximum capacity due to maintenance and other variables.