17 Exploitation of Rivers in Poland for Electricity …
341
Fig. 17.2 Hydropower plant Pilchowice I [26]
at the level of the dam in Por˛ abka is 18.8 m
3 /s, which gives about 1.35 mln m
3 per
day. The maximum flow is 64.6 m
3 /s, and the nominal head is 21 m. The power plant
in Por˛ abka is equipped with two generating sets using Kaplan turbines with a total
capacity of 12.1 MW and small generating set with a 0.4 MW Francis turbine to
supply own purposes. The annual energy production is 2.5 GWh.
17.6 Small Hydropower Plants in Poland
In addition to the largest hydropower plants mentioned, small hydropower plants
play an important role in the Polish landscape. The division into categories of small
and large hydropower plants is conventional. Large hydropower plants (HP) are
those with nominal capacity above the limit value, while small (SHP) are those
with a nominal capacity below this value. Up to now, there is still no international
agreement on the limit value in the definition of “small” hydropower plants. The
upper limits between small and large hydropower plants ranges between 2.5 and
25 MW. Still, in the 1970s, in Poland, a small hydropower plant was considered to
be a facility with a nominal capacity below 1 MW [15]. In later years, the maximum
limit of 5 MW was assumed to be the upper limit of SHP in Poland, and 10 MW has
recently been proposed [28].
In countries such as Brazil, USA [29, 30] and Russia, the SHP limit is set at
30 MW [31]. For example, in China, the upper limit of output power produced in a