Water Shortages

The proposal tackles an important environmental issue in water shortages. Webecoist has made water a top 4 global issue, ABC news listed it as the number 1 issue, and was listed as a top 10 problem by Scientific American. Water shortage has claimed nearly 3.575 million people each year on average, which is the equivalent of the population in Los Angeles. According to water.org, about 884 million people lack access to clean water which is 3 times the population of the United States. The goal of this proposal is to provide a clean water source to wherever there are hydroelectric dams. If we were to provide a way to conserve water to the public, we are able to lead to more positive responses to battling water shortages globally.

Power and Filters

Hydroelectric generators and dams are highly efficient energy producers. They are both cost efficient and generally Eco-friendly. We plan to use the water that is used in these dams as clean sources of water for household use. This can be achieved by taking a small amount of water and filtering out all of the bacteria. Then it will be evenly distributed to homes following the power lines. Furthermore, we can take this another step further and recycle the water back into the same process. After the water leaves the homes, it can go back to the water reservoirs and repeat the process. Also, this process can almost guarantee the reduction of water shortages within the area. Reduction of water shortages can be accomplished by carefully managing the amount of water distributed and the amount of water that is produced by natural means.

Collaboration Hydroelectricity

Taking this further: How we can collaborate with SMUD

( This focuses more on who we can collaborate with to help use hydroelectricity to create clean filters rather than creating the filters) SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District) is a large company that supplies a large chunk of the Sacramento County and a tiny portion of Placer County with the energy it generates, and is a very large utility company. It utilizes natural gas, but around 50% of the energy it uses is generated through renewable green energies and extremely powerful and large hydroelectric power plants, which is a very big advantage compared to other companies. It creates a large amount of electricity from the hydroelectric plants based on the American Rivers. It also owns wind and solar powered electricity plants, but the hydroelectric are the plants that are of importance. 11 reservoirs in the Upper American River and 8 powerhouses help to generate the massive amount of hydroelectric power that they attain and distribute to people. In one water year (October 1 – September 30), they generate around 2 billion kilowatt-hours of energy to supply to hundreds of thousands of homes. This may not be as large as some of the very large hydroelectric plants; this is good enough to suffice a good portion of the state, mainly Sacramento County/ Placer. Of course all this water can’t all just be bundled up without the help of the dams they build. The largest one of the 2 they have is the Consumnes Power Plant, on the Consumnes River. It creates a massive amount of their hydroelectricity, something that could be useful if used in larger amounts. Hydroelectricity has great benefits, and a few downsides, one of which could become a problem. It’s not the hydroelectricity itself, but the dams building is split in between the river it is created in, creating a disturbance in the environment. But we wouldn’t have to create any dams, since, if we could use SMUDs dams, then that could make this issue a lot simpler to deal with, just don’t create the dam. Using SMUDs resources, people can pursue a better and more efficient source of energy, hydroelectricity. SMUD was the best choice because they extensively use and research in hydroelectricity.  

The comparison of SMUD to another popular utility company

This is a more complex filter that can be applied to the river. In this filter, the water passes through a settling cone that collects debris, it is designed with an up flow design and passes through other media that helps improve the filter's performance. At the final stage, the water is polished and can be implemented into a city's water system. In addition to this, the city has more clean and accessible water, this can help reduce the amount of water shortages that happen in the city.

This is a basic water filter that can be applied to the end of the out flowing river.  The water is pushed through a mineral tank, gravel, sediment, etc. As the water flows through, it is cleaned and purified; from there, it can go directly to homes for drinking, bathing, etc. (Hydroelectricity does NOT contaminate water, the filters are for things such as bacteria carried from the reservoirs).

Power Production

So how do hydroelectric dams work? Generally, flowing water is used to turn a turbine, which turns a shaft in the electric generator, producing electricity.

In some cases water flows down into a reservoir to be pumped back up for later use.

However, in this case, about 10% of the water that flows downhill will be used in household applications which requires a clean source of water.
Source: http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/hyhowworks.html

The general process of how hydroelectric power is generated.