Hydropower Outlook of Turkey in 2021

Abstract

Turkey is located partly on Europe and also on Asia, and has a surface area of 780 580 km(2) and a population of 84.6 million and electric energy is essential for the everyday life. The annual per capita consumption of electricity is mainly used to measure the prosperity of a nation.

The energy use in a country increases not only with population increase but also by improving the living standards of people and industrial development. Turkey being a non-oil-producing country at present, therefore needs to import fossil fuels (like natural gas and fuel oil) as the main source of electric energy. The utilization of fossil fuels for energy production by thermal power plants is one of the main sources of air pollution. The consumption of imported energy sources should be reduced for the environmental, economic, and political reasons. As the electricity need of the country is increasing continuously, more energy from the renewables and national resources must be produced.

Hydropower plants (HPPs) provide clean, fast, flexible electricity generation. The amount of electricity that aHPP can produce basically depends on the available flow rate (Q) and the head (H). Very briefly the greater the flow rate and the net head, the more electricity can be produced in a HPP.

The first hydropower station of Turkey had been opened at Tarsus town in 1929. Number of hydropower installations and total installed capacity has increased especially after the 1960s.

In 2020, the Turkish electric production values were 32.9% from HPPs, 27.2% from thermal plants working with natural gas, 21.3% from thermal plants working with coal, 8.8% fromwind power plants, 6.8% from the sun, 1.6% from geothermal plants, and about 1.4% from other types of sources.

Technically and economically feasible total hydroelectric energy potential of Turkey is 180 billion kWh/year, of which 160 billion kWh/year has been developed and completed. With 714 completed facilities and 31,391 MW installed power and 108.0 billion kWh/year of it has been put into operation. With the projects to be established until 2023, a total installed power capacity of 40,000 MW and a generation potential of 135 billion kWh/year will be reached.

Because of the very fast increase in energy consumption, and only 22% of total energy is produced from national sources, and 125 billion dollars total investment is needed. Due to the climate change, and the change in the oil prices, the renewable sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass, hydropower etc. should be developed and put in service as quickly and efficiently as possible.

In this paper, the current level of hydropower production and energy saving, and power consumption by different sectors, and the subject matter of the most recent energy figures are given and the future projections are also presented.