The status of renewable electricity from hydropower in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Turkey has many problems due to its increasing energy consumption and rapid economic growth. Foreign energy dependency adversely affects sustainable development of the country by hindering its economic development. Turkey has a yearly total 433 TWh hydropower capacity and 151 TWh yearly economical capacity. The electricity demand of Turkey will reach to around 420 TWh annually by 2020. Turkey had 521 operational hydropower plants with a total capacity of almost 24,000 MW in 2014. This corresponds to 34% of the total capacity. Within the first 8 months of 2015, 8 more hydropower plants came online with a capacity of around 1,240 MW. The share of hydro in power generation capacity went up by 1% during the first five months of the year reaching 35% from its previous 34% level in 2014.

KEYWORDS:

• Electricity generation
• energy security
• hydropower
• renewables
• Turkey

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank Professor Kamil Kaygusuz for his valuable suggestions and assistance in preparing this manuscript.