Hydropower Potential on Agricultural Dam: An Evaluation for Pedu Dam

Abstract

In line with its continuous GDP increase, the growth in electricity demand has shown a similar trend of annual increment for Malaysia. With the projected continuous increase of electricity demand, more fossil fuel-based power plants are committed to be built in the near future. To mitigate the resulting greenhouse gas emission from increasing demand, exploiting existing agricultural dam initially built for agricultural purposes for energy can be considered as an option. This study shows the potential of generating electricity from Pedu dam located in Kedah, initially built with the objective to harvest paddy twice annually. The study shows that there is a potential of 156,072MWh to be generated from the dam water release, with the power of 33,155kW and a capacity factor of 53.7%, using Kaplan type turbine.