This is a list of major hydroelectric power station failures due to damage to a hydroelectric power station or its connections. Every generating station trips from time to time due to minor defects and can usually be restarted when the defect has been remedied. Various protections are built into the stations to cause shutdown before major damage is caused. Some hydroelectric power station failures may go beyond the immediate loss of generation capacity, including destruction of the turbine itself, reservoir breach and significant destruction of national grid infrastructure downstream. These can take years to remedy in some cases.
Where a generating station is large compared to the connected grid capacity, any failure can cause extensive disruption within the network. A serious failure in a proportionally large hydroelectric generating station or its associated transmission line will remove a large block of power from the grid that may lead to widespread disturbances.
Plant | Location | Country | Description | Year | Reference |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
St. Francis Dam | Los Angeles County | United States | Catastrophically failed due to a defective soil foundation and design flaws, triggering a flood that claimed the lives of at least 431 people. | 1928 | |
Möhne Reservoir | Ruhr | Germany | Destroyed during WWII by RAF Lancaster bombers during Operation Chastise. 5.1 MW capacity lost for about six weeks. At least 1,579 people killed by the resulting floodwave. | 1943 | |
Edersee Dam | Waldeck-Frankenberg | Germany | Destroyed during WWII by RAF Lancaster bombers during Operation Chastise. 16 MWe of generation lost. | 1943 | |
Sui-ho, Fusen, Kyosen and Choshin Dams | Korea | Due to enemy bombing, attacked during the Korean War resulting in the loss of approximately 90% of North Korea's generation capacity | 1952 | [1] | |
Schoellkopf Power Station | Niagara Falls, New York | United States | Destruction of the plant as it fell from the Niagara Gorge wall and collapsed into the Niagara River, caused by water seeping into the back wall of the power station. One worker was killed and damage was estimated at US$100 million (or $1076 million today, adjusted for inflation). | 1956 | [2] |
Malpasset Dam | Côte d'Azur | France | breach was caused by a tectonic fault in the impermeable rock base, which had been inadequately surveyed. 423 deaths | 1959 | |
Vajont Dam | Pordenone | Italy | Overtopping due to landslide caused by instability of the rock around, with the evidence of the instability suppressed by the Government. 1,917 deaths | 1963 | |
Mangla Dam | Kashmir | Pakistan | The power house was damaged due to an Indian Air Force raid during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. The 1000 MW hydro project was temporarily out of service. | 1971 | [3] |
Banqiao Dam | Henan | China | 1975 Banqian Dam failure: 26,000 dead from flooding, 145,000 dead from subsequent famine and epidemics, 11 million homeless. Caused loss of generation, dam failed by overtopping in a 1-in-2,000 year flood [4] | 1975 | |
Teton Dam | Idaho | United States | The dam foundations washed away and a wave swept aside everything in its path, including two towns, killing at least eleven people, and thousands of cattle. [5] | 1976 | |
Machchhu Dam | Morbi | India | The Machhu Dam-II collapsed, leading to the deluge of the city of Morbi and the surrounding rural areas. 1800–25,000 people were killed. [6] [7] | 1979 | |
Lawn Lake Dam | Colorado | United States | Failed in fair weather due to a combination of poor construction, age, and neglect. Caused downstream failure of the Cascade Dam. Destroyed historical Stanley hydro power station and a fish hatchery. Flooded a campground and the town of Estes Park impacting 75% of business activity. $31 million in damages and three lives lost. Three similar dams in the region were subsequently demolished. | 1982 | [8] |
Dartmouth Dam | Victoria | Australia | The 180MW Francis turbine-generator running at full speed was instantaneously stopped by a foreign body left in the penstock following maintenance.[7] The installation shifted about 2m within the base of the 180m high earth and rock fill gravity dam wall of the 3,906GL reservoir. After initial consternation regarding the integrity of the wall (declared safe after lengthy assessment), the hydro installation was repaired/replaced but was off-line for several years. A breach of the wall would have obliterated only a couple of small towns and a sparsely settled agricultural area in the relatively narrow 120 km Mitta Mitta valley below the dam, but more significantly, would have resulted in the over-topping and probable failure of the earthen walls of the 40m high 3,038GL Lake Hume, 200 km downstream on the Murray River. This is immediately upstream of the regional cities of Albury and Wodonga and a much more intensively settled irrigation area, and consequences would have been disastrous. | 1990 | |
Srisailam Dam | Andhra Pradesh | India | Due to poor reservoir operation, flood water overflowed into the semi underground power house (770 MW) from the point where a protection wall was to be constructed before power house commissioning in 1987. Flood water deluge caused the complete submergence of power house, massive debris accumulation, electrical equipment replacement and loss of power generation for a year | 1998 | [9] |
Bieudron Hydroelectric Power Station | Valais | Switzerland | 1269 MW loss, penstock rupture, three fatalities, flooding and loss of generating capacity | 2000 | [10] |
Taum Sauk Hydroelectric Power Station | Missouri | United States | Due to its being designed without a spillway and continuing to operate when management knew the gauging system was faulty, the upper reservoir was overtopped when water continued to be pumped from the lower reservoir after the upper was already full. A large section of the upper reservoir failed, draining over a billion gallons of water (4 million m³) in less than half an hour. There were no fatalities, but five people were injured. The failure resulted in permanent damage to the surrounding landscape and power generation did not resume until 2010. | 2005 | [11] [12] [13] |
Itaipu Dam | Paraná (BR) Alto Paraná (PY) | Brazil Paraguay | 18 GW power generation loss due to storm damage of transmission lines. | 2009 | see also: 2009 Brazil and Paraguay blackout |
Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam | Khakassia | Russia | 2009 Sayano-Shushenskaya hydro accident, 6 GW power generation loss, 75 fatalities, due to turbine failure | 2009 | [14] |
Srisailam Dam | Andhra Pradesh | India | On 2 October 2009, an earth dam burst above the Srisailam reservoir creating a record inflow which threatened the dam | 2009 | [15] |
Vishnuprayag hydro electric station (400 MW) | Uttarakhand | India | Flash floods resulted in accumulation of huge quantity of muck and debris in the dam reservoir | 2013 | [16] |
Dhauliganga hydro electric station (280 MW) | Uttarakhand | India | Unprecedented flash floods in June, 2013 in the State of Uttarakhand causing the complete submergence of power house. Massive debris accumulation, electrical equipment replacement and loss of total generation capacity for more than six months. | 2013 | [17] |
Uri-II Power Station (240 MW) | Jammu and Kashmir | India | A large fire incident happened in one of the transformers of the power station. | 2014 | |
Oroville Dam | California | United States | Damaged spillway caused evacuation of 180,000 | 2017 | See also: Oroville Dam crisis |
Kakhovka Dam | Kherson Oblast | Ukraine (occupied by Russia) | Breached during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. | 2023 | See also: Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam |
Dartmouth Dam is a large rock-fill embankment dam with an uncontrolled chute spillway across the Mitta Mitta, Gibbo and Dart rivers, the Morass Creek and a number of small tributaries. The dam is located near Mount Bogong in the north-east of the Australian state of Victoria. The dam's purpose includes irrigation, the generation of hydro-electric power, water supply and conservation. The impounded reservoir is called Dartmouth Reservoir, sometimes called Lake Dartmouth. The Dartmouth Power Station, a hydro-electric power station that generates power to the national grid, is located near the dam wall.
A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, aquaculture, and navigability. Hydropower is often used in conjunction with dams to generate electricity. A dam can also be used to collect or store water which can be evenly distributed between locations. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions.
Small hydro is the development of hydroelectric power on a scale suitable for local community and industry, or to contribute to distributed generation in a regional electricity grid. Exact definitions vary, but a "small hydro" project is less than 50 megawatts (MW), and can be further subdivide by scale into "mini" (<1MW), "micro" (<100 kW), "pico" (<10 kW). In contrast many hydroelectric projects are of enormous size, such as the generating plant at the Three Gorges Dam at 22,500 megawatts or the vast multiple projects of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH), or pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES), is a type of hydroelectric energy storage used by electric power systems for load balancing. The method stores energy in the form of gravitational potential energy of water, pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation. Low-cost surplus off-peak electric power is typically used to run the pumps. During periods of high electrical demand, the stored water is released through turbines to produce electric power. Although the losses of the pumping process make the plant a net consumer of energy overall, the system increases revenue by selling more electricity during periods of peak demand, when electricity prices are highest. If the upper lake collects significant rainfall or is fed by a river then the plant may be a net energy producer in the manner of a traditional hydroelectric plant.
Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower. Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and also more than nuclear power. Hydropower can provide large amounts of low-carbon electricity on demand, making it a key element for creating secure and clean electricity supply systems. A hydroelectric power station that has a dam and reservoir is a flexible source, since the amount of electricity produced can be increased or decreased in seconds or minutes in response to varying electricity demand. Once a hydroelectric complex is constructed, it produces no direct waste, and almost always emits considerably less greenhouse gas than fossil fuel-powered energy plants. However, when constructed in lowland rainforest areas, where part of the forest is inundated, substantial amounts of greenhouse gases may be emitted.
The Taum Sauk pumped storage plant is a power station in the St. Francois mountain region of Missouri, United States about 90 miles (140 km) south of St. Louis near Lesterville, Missouri, in Reynolds County. It is operated by Ameren Missouri.
The Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, also known as Dnipro Dam, in the city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, is the largest hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper river. It is the fifth step of the Dnieper cascade of hydroelectric stations that provides electric power for the Donets–Kryvyi Rih Industrial region. The Dnieper Reservoir stretches 129 kilometres (80 mi) upstream to near Dnipro city.
Ameren Corporation is an American power company created December 31, 1997, by the merger of St. Louis, Missouri's Union Electric Company and the neighboring Central Illinois Public Service Company of Springfield, Illinois. It is now a holding company for several power companies and energy companies. The company is based in St. Louis, serving 2.4 million electric, and 900,000 natural gas customers across 64,000 square miles in central and eastern Missouri and the southern four-fifths of Illinois by area.
The Dnieper reservoir cascade or Dnieper cascade of hydroelectric power stations is a series of dams, reservoirs and hydroelectric power stations on the Dnieper river in Ukraine. It was created to prevent uncontrolled flooding and improve water transportation infrastructure. Coordination and operation of all dams on the Dnieper is conducted by government company Ukrhydroenergo. In 1970, the Kyiv dam partially prevented flooding in comparison with the 1931 Kyiv flooding.
The Haditha Dam or Qadisiya Dam is an earth-fill dam on the Euphrates, north of Haditha (Iraq), creating Lake Qadisiyah. The dam is just over 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) long and 57 metres (187 ft) high. The purpose of the dam is to generate hydroelectricity, regulate the flow of the Euphrates and provide water for irrigation. It is the second-largest hydroelectric contributor to the power system in Iraq behind the Mosul Dam.
Taum Sauk Mountain State Park is a Missouri state park located in the St. Francois Mountains in the Ozarks. The park encompasses Taum Sauk Mountain, the highest point in the state. The Taum Sauk portion of the Ozark Trail connects the park with nearby Johnson's Shut-ins State Park and the Bell Mountain Wilderness Area, which together are part of a large wilderness area popular with hikers and backpackers.
Run-of-river hydroelectricity (ROR) or run-of-the-river hydroelectricity is a type of hydroelectric generation plant whereby little or no water storage is provided. Run-of-the-river power plants may have no water storage at all or a limited amount of storage, in which case the storage reservoir is referred to as pondage. A plant without pondage is subject to seasonal river flows, thus the plant will operate as an intermittent energy source. Conventional hydro uses reservoirs, which regulate water for flood control, dispatchable electrical power, and the provision of fresh water for agriculture.
A dam failure or dam burst is a catastrophic type of structural failure characterized by the sudden, rapid, and uncontrolled release of impounded water or the likelihood of such an uncontrolled release. Between the years 2000 and 2009 more than 200 notable dam failures happened worldwide.
The Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam is located on the Yenisei River, near Sayanogorsk in Khakassia, Russia. It is the largest power plant in Russia and the 12th-largest hydroelectric plant in the world, by average power generation. The full legal name of the power plant, OJSC [Open Joint-Stock Society] P. S. Neporozhny Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP [hydro power plant], refers to the Soviet-time Minister of Energy and Electrification Pyotr Neporozhny. As of 2009 the head of the power plant was Valery Kyari.
According to the International Hydropower Association, Canada is the fourth largest producer of hydroelectricity in the world in 2021 after the United States, Brazil, and China. In 2014, Canada consumed the equivalent of 85.7 megatonnes worth of oil of hydroelectricity, 9.8% of worldwide hydroelectric consumption. Furthermore, hydroelectricity accounted for 25.7% of Canada's total energy consumption. It is the third-most consumed energy in Canada behind oil and natural gas.
Mammoth Pool Dam is a hydroelectric dam located on the San Joaquin River in the southern Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, about 45 miles (72 km) northeast of Fresno. It forms Mammoth Pool Reservoir and lies within the Sierra National Forest. The dam and reservoir were named after a large natural pool in the river that was once located above the present dam site.
The Samanala Dam is a dam primarily used for hydroelectric power generation in Sri Lanka. Commissioned in 1992, the Samanalawewa Project is the third-largest hydroelectric scheme in the country, producing 405 GWh of energy annually. It was built with financial support from Japan and the United Kingdom. It is notable for a large leak on its right bank. Power production continues as planned despite the leakage, and the water from the leak now provides two thirds of the water issued by the reservoir for agriculture in downstream areas.
Judy Company is a geotechnical engineering firm located in Kansas City, Kansas. It was founded in 1922 by a geological engineer named Philip S. Judy, using the name Air Made Well Company.
Policy makers often debate the constraints and opportunities of renewable energy.