Extreme hydroelectricity on the Rhine

I closed my last post with the question "can we do better?". Well, at least we can try, by using one of the other major rivers in Europe: the Rhine. The Rhine passes through a convenient gorge between Bingen and Bonn.

Almost any place in that gorge is suitable for a dam, so I planned one about in the middle near Kamp-Bornhofen. Now, we need to ask the same question as before; how high can be make the reservoir? Using the same procedure on the GTOPO30 data set shows that the critical point on the Rhine's watershed lies in the saddle between the Taunus range and the Vogelsberg, or right about here. GTOPO30 suggests that a waterlevel of 210 meters above sea level would leave some 5-10 meters of headroom.

Now, filling up the lake to 210 meters above sea level floods the entire middle Rhine valley, and even partly extends into the Elzas in France:

So how much power do we get from this? One can find here that just below Mainz (or just above the Rhine gorge), the average discharge is 1620 cubic meters per second. Wikipedia tells us that the Rhine flows at 69 meters above sea level in Kamp-Bornhofen, which gives us a 210 - 69 = 141 meter drop. Using the same calculation as before, this yields:

P = ρhrgk = 1000 * 141 * 1620 * 9.81 * 0.5 = 1.12 GW

This is already better than our previous installation. Over the course of a full year, this would give us 9.82 TWh of electrical energy, or about 3.54e+16 Joules. This would cover 0.35% of Europe's needs.

But we can do better. Check in later!