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Harnessing hydropower

September 25, 2012

Turkey faces an electricity shortage but one thing it has in abundance is water. The country plans to tap this potential and expand hydropower to ease its energy problems.

https://p.dw.com/p/16DnB
Image: Jan Michael Ihl

Water Management in Turkey

Project goal: Generating electricity from water
Project type: Hydro power plant in the Elazig province
Project size: Installed capacity of 5 megawatts. 27,000 megawatts of electricity to be produced each year.
Project volume: $10 million
Carbon savings: 11,700 tons of C02 each year

Turkey faces a number of challenges on the energy front. The country is plagued by a chronic electricity shortage with frequent power cuts. It now has big plans to boost its electricity production and ease the energy crunch. The rivers of Euphrates and Tigris originate in Turkey, providing it with an abundant water supply. But so far, Ankara has made little use of its massive water potential mainly because of a lack of know-how in building and operating modern hydro plants that do not require controversial dam projects. That's slowly changing as a recently-built hydro power plant in the country's east shows.

A film by Miltiades Arsenopoulos