Small Hydro - Highlights

Thanks to the flexibility and cooperative spirit of our customers and ANDRITZ staff, our projects in execution have overcome the various lockdowns and restrictions following the global COVID pandemic surprisingly well. Nonetheless, there certainly has been an impact on new projects. Together with growing environmental concerns and constraints, long licensing and permitting phases, and low tariffs, this is an additional limitation that has contributed to the significant market downturn in Europe.

“Small hydropower plants are a cost-efficient, environmentally friendly solution for communities to become independent from fossil fuels.”

However, with concern over global warming and increasing environmental pollution, growing, the demand for environmentally friendly solutions is also expanding. Small hydro power is a reliable and almost constant source of renewable energy, and therefore plays an important role in balancing increasing energy production from solar and wind. Consequently, markets in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa continue showing signs of recovery and interesting project perspectives for decentralized, off-grid solutions or stand-alone systems. Small hydro provides safe, clean, and renewable energy, which is an important precondition for rural development.

Additionally, the transition to a green energy supply system calls for new investments to stabilize networks and grids. Grid system operators struggle globally to manage variable energy produced from wind and solar. Temporary storage systems – either traditional pumped storage schemes or new battery energy storage systems – will be key to help “shift” excess green energy to those periods when natural supply is low. We consider this to be another strong impetus for the small hydro market. Naturally, ANDRITZ has the complete plant engineering in-house expertise to support all our customers on our common journey towards an emission-free future.