An investigation on low head hydropower in United State and Canada

Hydropower plays a significant role in renewable electricity production. Nowadays many countries are planning to develop small and micro hydropower because of environmental issues caused by developing large scale hydro powers. Low head hydro powers are among renewable sources of energy which attracts a lot of attention in last years. In this paper low head hydropower in United State and Canada has been investigated in terms of available potentials, allocated funds, incentive policies and economic analyses. There are about 67 GW theoretical low head hydropower potentials in United States which government is planning to exploit 30 GW of these potentials until 2030. To reach this goal, US government has allocated 14% of hydropower research and development’s fund to this area in last recent years. In Canada 5 GW theoretical low head potentials have identified. Although capital cost of low head hydropower is higher than other renewable energy, but due to longer lifetime and higher capacity factor, overall cost in unit of generated energy is lower than some renewable energy including photovoltaic, solar thermal energy and biomass. Therefore low head hydropower needs appropriate incentive policy for higher deployment.