University professor Dr. Bernhard Pelikan of the University of Agricultural Sciences, Vienna, explained on the occasion of an EVN expert meeting on small power plants this April that “in the last decades about 70 percent of the potential worth being developed have been exploited as a result of consequent development programmes in power management.” In the field of small-scale power generation this exploitation rate amounts to only about 40 percent.

The “small” generate almost 8 percent

The importance of the Austrian small power stations is shown by comparing the outputs: with an annual amount of 4,150 kWh of electricity fed into the supply system, the environmentally sound energy generators produced 7.5 percent of the electricity needed in our country. This amount is higher than the total power generated in the three Danube hydropower stations in Vienna, Greifenstein and Ybbs-Persenbeug. Given the annual average consumption of 4,000 kWh of a private household, the domestic small hydropower plants supply more than one million Austrian families with power.

EIWOG amendment eases the situation

With the latest EIWOG amendment (power management and organisation law) legislature responded to the major claim from small hydropower station operators to apply in Austria, too, the uniform definition limits valid throughout Europe and to provide for uniform feeding tariffs. Previously, the provinces were responsible for the definition of small hydropower stations. In Carinthia, for example, power generators with maximally 4 MW were identified as small hydropower stations, in Vorarlberg this limit value was restricted to 2 MW. From now on the limit value of 10 MW is valid throughout Austria. Kottulinsky has mixed feelings about this new regulation: “This regulation also applies to a number of public power station operators. About 3,200 of the 4,200 gWh generated in small hydropower stations come from power stations with capacities between 5 and 10 MW.” For the newly established system of buying “small water certificates” (for details see the interview with Hanns Kottulinsky) this new capacity definition is even more interesting.

The controversial feeding tariffs, too, which differed from province to province are also regulated under the EIWOG amendment. The price for energy from small hydropower stations shall consist of the “physical power supply at market prices on the international power market and the small water certificate – equally at market prices,” says Kottulinsky. A big step towards more ecology with regard to power is also this provision in the EIWOG amendment that every final power user – households, authorities, railways, commerce or industry equally – has to prove that eight percent of the power he buys come from domestic small hydropower stations.

Small hydropower stations seen from an ecological angle

“It is a fatal error to think that our brooks and rivers have mainly deteriorated due to small hydropower stations. The major share of damage stems from hydraulic engineering that postulated a linear regulation of water courses,” says Prof. Pelikan. In the framework of the 3rd user forum “Small hydropower stations” of the OTTI Energie-Kolleg, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Tönsmann of the University of Kassel requested the operators “to share the basic principles of the political environmental policy, i.e. sustainability, climate protection and water protection” even though this may be difficult in view of individual conditions. Hydropower from small stations, however, must not be ruined by water protection.
(Source: aqua press Int. 06/2000)
Dr. Alexander Tempelmayr

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