As a clean, sustainable and renewable energy - Hydropower in Turkey

At the beginning of 2000's, Turkish government began privatizing some of its electricity generating and distribution networks, and allowing for more private construction and ownership in the sector. Owing to Turkey's regions, most of which are hilly, it can be possible to develop relatively higher heads without expensive civil engineering works, so that relatively smaller flows are required to develop for the desired power. In these cases, it may be possible to construct a relatively simple diversion structure and to obtain the highest drop by diverting flows at the top of a waterfall. There are intensive investigations to improve and development hydropower in Turkey. In recently, electricity demand has increased significantly and it is the fastest growing end-use of energy. Therefore, in the developing countries such as Turkey, the role of hydropower energy is very important. Because benefits of hydroelectric power make it an important contributor to the future world energy, particularly in the less developed countries. In this paper, as a clean, sustainable and renewable energy, hydropower and its benefits have been investigated in Turkey and some proposals which are to develop hydropower in this country have been presented.