Workshops

Small Hydro Workshop

Sunday 25 April

Many factors are considered in the design and construction of the optimum hydropower project.  All parts of a scheme are interrelated and interdependent. Change one component and all others will be affected.

This workshop, following successful ones held in Vientiane, Montreux, Marrakech, Seville, Danang, Gdansk, Namibia, and Porto, is aimed at people who are, or will be, involved in hydropower development as part of rural electrification programmes. It will cover run-of-river hydro projects in the ‘pico’ to ‘mini’ range (1 kW to 1 MW capacity). As this is a diverse form of energy production, there are always areas which are unfamiliar to people, despite many individual specialisms. This workshop aims to fill in the gaps, and help people to gain a good basic grounding in the topic.  The Workshop is led by  Prof D. Williams and G. Black,  of  Learning  Hydro, UK.

This will be a ‘hands-on’ workshop, which will involve the participants, working in groups, to develop an actual hydropower project during the day. After presentations on the individual scheme aspects, the groups will put together the components of the project. This will follow through to the completed design.

5th Large Operators' Roundtable

Sunday 25 April

It is provisionally planned to hold the next of these valuable Roundtable discussions, organzed by Itaipu Binacional, Brazil/Paraguay, prior to HYDRO 2020. This full-day event is planned as an informal, exclusive, high-level forum to exchange knowledge about real-time operational challenges and experiences at some of the world’s major hydro plants.

The mission is to allow for discussion among senior professionals responsible for the daily operation of the plants. Participants will be invited to play an active role in the discussion. Interventions will be welcome on best practice, or on challenging issues where the opinions of other operators could be helpful in resolving problems. A suggested principal topic for this year is: ‘Measures taken by big hydro facilities against COVID-19 to guarantee people and operational safety’.