Examination of changes in the Turkish hydropower development,regulation,and planning

Abstract

Hydropower has a critical role in supplying the energy demand and sustaining the economic and industrial growth in Turkey. Over the past decade, several policy changes have been made to improve the contribution of hydropower in overall national energy production. Turkey is utilizing less than half of the hydropower potential and planning to employ almost full of its potential within the next 10 years. For this plan to be realized there is a need to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the past and recent regulations. Implications from such an analysis are believed to be necessary for a better national energy strategy. This work fills this gap and presents analysis of data representing utilized and unutilized hydropower potential obtained from the official sources. The analysis coupled with the recent policy changes was discussed within the context of sustainable hydropower structure. The unutilized hydropower potential plays a crucial role in national energy security. It is also evident that hydropower alone will not be meeting the rapidly increasing demand. So far, however, researchers have shown an increased interest in unutilized hydropower potential; there has been no detailed analysis about identifying characteristics of this potential and developing strategies in terms of required technological investments. The efforts toward realizing the long-term national energy security goals need to consider establishing research development and manufacturing capabilities of domestic hydropower equipment which will fit the need to reduce foreign dependence on hydropower energy technology.

Keywords

Hydropower energy policy energy security hydro-turbines

Introduction

The technological advancements and growing population have increased energy demand significantly over the past few decades. As a result, Turkey is under constant pressure for increasing the energy production using national resources and technology, while maintaining the energy security. Another constrain is the foreign dependence on the energy sources and technology. The numbers as well as the policies, laws, and regulations are changing rapidly in the energy sector in Turkey. Policy changes are actually careful recasts of existing rules and regulations and are geared toward improvement and reducing the foreign dependence. A closer look, nevertheless, indicates that there are some issues being raised as well, as the new changes are implemented. A better assessment of the situation is possible by analyzing in detail the hydropower data together with the changes in policies/regulations. The contribution of this paper is twofold: (i) to reflect the progress in terms of hydropower over the years, examine the changes in policies which rule the energy market, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of these changes and (ii) focus on the details of existing and potential power plant projects in an effort to reveal the tendencies and gaps in terms of discharge, head, power, and utilized equipment types.

This study contains five interconnected sections and each includes analysis of the data obtained from official sources and in-depth discussion as well as suggestions for possible solutions, starting with description of the energy supply and demand issues in the following section. In “The survey of energy policies in Turkey” section, the development of the energy policies over the years is presented in detail. “Story of the unutilized hydropower in Turkey” section, in light of the policy survey, elaborates on the progress and issues about the unutilized hydropower potential in Turkey. “Electro-mechanical equipment in Turkey” section reveals the tendencies and gaps regarding the equipment used in hydropower plants in Turkey. In the final section, we summarize the conclusions based on the discussions presented in each section.

Electricity demand and production: General view

Turkey is the leading country among the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) members and has the second place after China in the world in terms of growth in energy demand when the last 10 years are considered.¹ Since 2001, electricity consumption per capita in Turkey has increased by 72.8% and reached 3199 kW h in 2012. Long-term demand projection report of Turkish Electricity Transmission Company (TEIAS) indicates that the generation of power plants will be insufficient to supply electricity demand by 2015 when the existing plants in operation and in project stage are considered.² It should be noted that the official data when the time this article was prepared were limited to 2012 and past.

In order to meet such an increase in the demand and sustain an economic growth, it is important to solve the energy problem within a reliable and sustainable fashion based on national resources. The point to be emphasized here is the dependence of Turkey on foreign energy sources, which is about 70% of total sources used.³ Energy demand in Turkey is mostly supplied by imported fossil-based sources such as petroleum, natural gas, and coal. Annual crude oil production of Turkey meets only 10% of the national demand.⁴ In 2011, the total import of Turkey was reported to be worth $240.8 billion and import related to energy was $20.5 billion excluding energy demand for transportation.⁵ Natural gas has the largest share in foreign import equivalent to 104,499.2 GW h, followed by imported coal with 29,210.5 GW h and third being imported fuel oil with 981.3 GW h. As of 2012, electricity production in Turkey based on foreign resources is 135,348.4 GW h.⁶

Hydropower depends on domestic resources and provides clean, cheap, stable, and low-risk energy compared to the fossil-based sources. Topographic formation and high potential of water resources brings Turkey to an advantageous position in terms of hydropower. Theoretical hydropower potential of Turkey is 433 TW h which corresponds to 1% of world’s theoretical potential. Economic hydropower potential of Turkey is 140 TW h and hydroelectricity production was reported to be 57.865 TW h in 2012.⁶

After 1980 s, hydropower production of Turkey has been insufficient to respond to the rapid growth of electricity demand as shown in Figure 1.⁶ In 2012, hydropower was able to meet only 24% of the demand. The other 82.135 TW h of unused hydropower potential is able to contribute around 34% of (242,369.9 GW h in 2012) the total electricity demand. Although this comparison shows clearly the gain to be accomplished utilizing the 100% of the nation’s hydropower potential, it is also evident that hydropower alone is not enough for a strong energy security structure. According to the high demand scenario of Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources’ (MENR) projection report, electricity demand will be 477.71 TW h in 2023 and it will reach 842.56 TW h in 2035.⁶ Forecast analysis of Melikoglu⁷ shows that energy consumption of Turkey will be higher than MENR’s projection and it will be 530.6 TW h in 2023. Recently, demand-driven degradation on energy balance exposed that; solution to the long-term supply problem cannot be addressed by only increasing the installed hydropower capacity. Main objective of national energy strategies should ideally involve, though the recent developments are geared toward this direction, planning projects supporting domestic equipment design, compatible energy policies, and most importantly efficiency in energy usage. In the next section, the development and changes in the organizations, regulations, and laws about energy sector in Turkey will be summarized and discussed.

The survey of energy policies in Turkey

History of the electricity operations in Turkey starts with the establishment of Etibank by the Law No. 2805 in 1935; a government funded national bank responsible for managing and financially supporting the energy sector. Within the same period, The Electrical Power Resources Planning and Survey Administration was established to take over and investigate the energy resources and plan the energy supply and demand. Records of the development of hydroelectric power plants (HEPPs) indicate for the first time an obvious rise in the 1950s by the establishment of General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works (DSI). Control and planning of water resources and construction of water structures have been under responsibility of DSI since then. Although it should be noted that recently the authority of DSI in the energy sector has been limited by the new laws and regulations, which will be discussed later in this article.

Between the years 1960 and 1970, 25 dams were constructed with the significant contribution of DSI and as of 2012, this number reached 285. After the establishment of MENR in 1964, the first and second national development plans were activated between 1963–1967 and 1968–1973, respectively. During the periods of these activation plans, electricity market operations were under the control of public authority (i.e. the Ministry and DSI). Soon after, in 1970 the Turkish Electricity Enterprise (TEK) was founded for managing the national power demand and controlling transmission and distribution of the electricity (decommissioned in 1994). TEK was branched into two organizations, namely the Turkish Electricity Distribution (TEDAS) and Turkish Electricity Production and Transmission (TEAS) companies in 1994. In 2001, TEAS was replaced with three organizations, TEIAS, EUAS ELEKTRIK URETIM A.S. (Elektricity Generation Company), and TETAS (TURKIYE ELEKTRIK TICARET VE TAAHHUT A.S.), responsible for transmission, production, and trade, respectively. These organizations (TEDAS, TEIAS, EUAS, and TETAS) are still active today and represent the public authority, while maintaining a private identity on the energy sector. The development of HEPPs is as follows and also as shown in Figure 2 in chronological order.^8,10

In 1984, Laws No. 3096, 3996, and 4283 were published to end the monopolization of state on energy market and to ensure participation of private sector in the energy market. Built-Operate-Transfer, Transfer of the Operational Rights, and Build-Operate models begun to be implemented to enhance the number of private sector investments. Despite these new regulations, the increase in the involvement of private sector in the energy market had not made a significant difference until the beginning of 2000s. In 2001, Electricity Market Law (Law No. 4628) was published and it enabled the establishment of Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EMRA) with the following Law No. 4646. As a result of the Electricity Market Law and Regulation of Water Use Agreements managed by DSI (2003), an intensive activity occurred in hydropower sector. Particularly, the private sector investments were observed to be increasing rapidly. In 2003, a regulation related to Water Usage Agreement was enacted which was valid only when multiple applications for a single project were done. According to this regulation, DSI was authorized to organize bidding invitations and choose the applicant which offers the highest price per kilowatt hour for the “water contribution share.” However, private sector investors suffered due to this extra cost of production. For instance, electricity market prices exceed water contribution share (per kilowatt hour) at some periods in a day, and as a result, some HEPPs were forced to stop operation mostly because of very little or no profit during these periods. Note that such problems occurred only for hydro while investments for wind and solar power were not influenced by such problems. To solve this issue, down payments of water contribution share were replaced with long-term payment periods to ease the financial load of initial investment costs. However, the increase in the applications of private sector for water usage agreement and hydropower production licenses this time brought up control problems and environmental concerns.^11,12 These problems and concerns are elaborated next.

Approval and inspections of planning and construction of HEPPs has been partially left to legal entities instead of DSI in 2006 (Law 5539). This development gave rise to the environmental concerns because the projects now could easily get approval without detailed environmental impact reports produced/inspected by DSI. Especially, in accordance with “water usage agreement,” HEPPs have to release a certain amount of water determined by DSI to provide minimum conditions for ecological life of animals and plants as well as for agricultural purposes. But the lack of standardization and inspecting authority of DSI also caused improper applications in this regard.¹³ In addition, small hydropower projects (25 MW or less) without consideration of nation-wide basin planning and long-term benefit analysis are presumably going to cause energy security problems because of the unsustainable or inadequate production (weak feasibility assessments). On a different note, although, the reported negative economic and environmental effects of large hydropower projects, some investors have been favoring large hydropower projects to obtain high profits which are influential to the electricity price balance. In a study conducted by Ansar et al.¹⁴ the actual costs of hydropower megaprojects are being questioned in the frame of financial, social, and environmental impacts. Three Georges Project in China could be shown as a significant example of a large hydropower project. Liu et al.¹⁵ discuss the challenges for facilitating sustainability of Three Georges Project and highlight the importance of efforts toward accommodation of strategic guidelines as indicated by International Hydropower Association.

It is obvious from this picture that there is a need for a better, long-term vision in policy making. Below we discuss the situation of the unutilized hydropower potential, its history and future in detail, in light of the policies and regulations discussed here.

Story of the unutilized hydropower in Turkey

Renewable Energy Law (Law No. 5346) was published in 2005 and the government implemented some incentives to support the investments in renewable energy. Renewable Energy Law could be considered as an important step in the development of hydropower in Turkey. It represents legal efforts about the market to provide compatibility with European Union legislations. HEPPs that have a reservoir area of less than 15 km² and river-type HEPPs are defined as a renewable energy source in Law No. 5346 but there is no limitation/designation for installed power.¹⁶ Although the main objective was promoting investments in small hydropower plants (SHEPPs), investors have tended to invest in large hydropower projects for more profit as discussed before. With this law, government guaranteed to buy electricity from legal entities for 5.5 $cent/kW h. In addition, discounts up to 85% were applied in the fees for “right to use water” and acquisition costs of treasury lands for SHEPPs both to be valid during the first 10 years of the plant’s operation. The incentives and discounts were intended to enhance especially the utilization of small hydropower potential. A few years after the Renewable Energy Law, provisions for SHEPPs were upgraded with the Law No. 5784 (2008) to increase the number of small hydropower projects. The necessity of obtaining license for electricity generation from HEPPs up to 500 kW was cancelled with this law. This limit then was increased to 1000 kW and is still valid. Guaranteed buying prices for renewable energy were increased in 2010 with the Law No. 5346 and the policies were rearranged according to the type of renewable energy (7.3 $cent/kW h for hydropower). Additional stimulations such as extra payments are applied to hydropower buying prices now depending on the ratio of domestic equipment used in the project (e.g. extra payments of 1.3 $cent/kW h for turbine and 1.0 $cent/kW h for generator and power electronics). On a different note, the certification of “domestic” equipment can still not be technically provided in Turkey to the best of authors’ knowledge. Guaranteed purchase prices for renewable energy vary in a range of 30–70 $cent/kW h at some European countries such as Italy, Greece, and Bulgaria. Low price policy for renewable energy in Turkey compared to other countries can be considered as a negative factor for development of hydropower investments.^17–20

Although small hydropower as a clean energy source is supported by the policies and regulations to utilize the unused hydropower potential of Turkey, uncontrolled construction and operation conditions cause environmental problems for certain projects. In this regard, effective watershed management plans compatible with European Union Water Framework Directorate have a critical role in sustainability of ecosystems and decreasing negative environmental impacts of power plants.²¹ That is, according to Environmental Impact Assessment Regulation, there was no necessity for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report for HEPPs with an installed capacity of 10 MW or less. Additionally, HEPPs with installed capacities between 10 and 50 MW could be also constructed without the EIA report if the project was approved by investigation of local authorities in or before 2008. As a result, tendency to successive river-type HEPPs, in particular, significantly increased due to lower investment costs, easiness at legal procedures (no obligation for EIA report and no license application), and incentive mechanism. During this period, 728 HEPP projects were legally permitted. Some of these projects were subjected to litigation as a result of objections of local residents. Some of the given licenses were cancelled as a result of court orders. According to HEPP data of EMRA, 341 license applications were rejected, 277 licenses were annulled for various reasons, 97 licenses were returned for revision, and 13 licenses were canceled.¹² After the rearrangement in EIA procedures in 2008, the EIA report became mandatory for projects with 25 MW installed capacity or higher. The decision body for projects under this limit was assigned to be again the local governorships.²²

The small hydropower projects are subject to many conflicts and complications due to the problems discussed above. Nevertheless, actions are taken by the government in order to dictate the EIA report for most of the small hydro projects.

The old Electricity Market Law which has been in use for 10 years was updated with the new Electricity Market Law (Law No. 6446) in 2013. Along with the new law, licensing system has been changed in order to address the previously encountered problems. For instance, the prelicense mechanism has been implemented for fulfilling all the requirements before the construction activities. In this regard, prelicense will be given to the applicants instead of the production license for the duration of first 24 months. Prelicense holders will also be subjected to a control process by Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning.

New regulations mentioned here are important to resolve the earlier problems in hydropower. It will be interesting to monitor the changes in the installed HEPP capacities chronologically together with the changes in the laws and regulations. Installed power of HEPPs is 22,222.759 MW in Turkey and increased by nearly a 100% between the years of 2000 and 2013 mostly due to the laws presented above (Table 1).⁶ Electricity Market Law in 2001 ended the eight years of stagnation in hydropower sector as shown in Figure 2. With the publication of Renewable Energy Law, acceleration in the installed hydropower is observed clearly between the years of 2005 and 2013. Despite the increase, the share of hydropower was only 34.4% of 57,059.4 MW total installed power in 2012. Economic crisis and preferences of other forms of energy production methods such as natural gas, as a faster solution for energy security, are also affecting the development of installed hydropower directly. The relation between legal adjustments and hydropower investments cannot be explained alone by ignoring these kinds of effects.

Table 1.

History of hydropower laws in Turkey.

1935	Law No. 2805, Establishment of Etibank
1954	Establishment of DSI
1964	Establishment of MENR
1970	Law No. 1312 Establishment of TEA
1984	Law No. 3096 (appointment of Legal Entities Except TEA)
1994	Law No. 3996 (BOT Model)
1997	Law No. 4283 (BO and TOR Models)
2001	Law No. 4628 (Electricity Market Law), Law No. 4646, Establishment of EMRA
2003	Regulation of Water Use Agreement
2005	Law No. 5346 (Renewable Energy Law)
2006	Law No. 5539 (changes in responsibility of DSI about HES project)
2008	Law No. 5784 (changes in Electricity Market Law)
2010	Law No. 6094 (changes in Renewable Energy Law)
2013	Law No. 6446 (New Electricity Market Law)

BO: Build-Operate; BOT: Built-Operate-Transfer; DSI: General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works; EMRA: Energy Market Regulatory Authority; MENR: Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources; TEA:; TOR: Transfer of the Operational Rights.

It is obvious from the arguments above that there is significant effort toward utilizing the hydropower potential at its limits in Turkey. Revisions in the laws and regulations arise frequently in response to the problems encountered. This positive evolution in the laws and regulations regarding hydropower capacity was observed in the past in developed countries. Norway, for instance, could be an appropriate example in terms of policies and regulation as one of the first liberated energy market in the world and the biggest hydropower producer in Europe.²³ Deregulation of Norway hydropower market has been made possible by the Energy Law in 1990 which is similar with Electricity Market Law of Turkey published in 2001 (Table 2).²⁴ Norway has managed to utilize their hydropower potential at its full limits for over 20 years now. In Figure 2 ²⁵ nearly stable installed hydropower levels over the years in Norway are shown. A careful observation will show that this was possible after several revisions and additions in energy laws and regulations that took place particularly before 1987. This example is close to what Turkey is trying to establish in the near future and the similarities between the approaches to the problem are promising.

Table 2.

History of hydropower sector regulations and laws in Norway (Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate).

1917	Law No. 16 The Industrial Licensing Law (acquisition of waterfalls, mines, and other real property)
1917	Law No. 17 The Watercourses Regulation Law
1987	Reg No. 945 (adjustment of license fees, annual compensation and funds, pursuant to water resources legislation)
1990	Law No. 50 The Energy Law (generation, conversion, transmission, trading, distribution, and use of energy)
2000	Law No. 82 The Water Resources Law (relating to river systems and groundwater), Reg No. 1271 (governing the safety and supervision of watercourse structures), Reg No. 1317 (governing the classification of watercourse), Reg No. 1318 (governing qualifications for those undertaking the planning, construction, and operation of watercourse structures)
2001	Reg No. 1421 (governing the planning and implementation of requisitioning of power and enforced reductions in supply in connection with electricity rationing)
2002	Reg No. 1606 (relating to contingency planning in the power supply system)
2002	Reg No. 1607 (relating to energy planning)
2004	Reg No. 1557 (relating to the quality of supply in the Norwegian power system)

On the other hand, Turkey has different problems yet to face such as the fact that even the utilization all of the hydropower potential is not covering nearly half of the demand. In other words, hydropower could only be an integrated part of the national energy security strategy but not the only remedy for the energy problem.²⁶ One of the overall national goals is also to reduce the foreign dependency of Turkey in energy sector. One important contributor to the Turkish dependence on foreign sources is also the technology and equipment used in power plants. Another purpose of this study is to elaborate on the hydropower equipment used in Turkey which is addressed in the next section.

Electro-mechanical equipment in Turkey

Operating principle of HEPPs depends on basic transformation of potential energy to kinetic energy. Generated power is calculated by the well-known power equation ( $P = γ \times H \times Q \times η$ ).Main variables of this equation are head (H), discharge (Q), and efficiency (η) of hydro-mechanic and electro-mechanic systems in HEPPs. Electro-mechanic system is the biggest part of the capital cost of plants and consists of turbine and generator components. The most important and valuable part of the electro-mechanic system is hydro-turbines. Selection of the turbine type in HEPPs depends primarily on head and discharge conditions of the project.

HEPPs are generally classified as large, small, mini, and micro according to installed power capacities. In Turkey, capacity limits are accepted as <100 kW for micro, 100–1000 kW for mini, 1000–10,000 kW for small, and >10,000 kW for LHEPP in accordance with the classifications of United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

Distribution of the licensed HEPPs in Turkey according to installed power capacities is shown in Figure 3. Majority of HEPPs are clustered between 0 and 50 MW (small and mid-sized plants). A total of 97 LHEPPs (>50 MW) have a capacity of 17,601.655 MW. This corresponds to about 64% of total installed hydropower. The rest of the installed power (36%) is from 791 HEPPs categorized as either small or mid-sized plants.¹²

Turkey has a total of 888 HEPPs licensed by EMRA. Five hundred and fourteen of them are in design/planning stages, 19 of them are partially in operation, and 355 of them are in operation (Table 3). Installed power of 412 HEPPs of total 514 licensed HEPPs in design/planning stages is under 25 MW. It is clear that the remaining hydropower potential in Turkey is planned to be utilized mostly by employing SHEPPs.

Table 3.

Distribution of HEPPs according to installed power (EMRA).

Installed power (MW)	Project		Partially in operation		In operation
Installed power (MW)	Count	Installed power (MW)	Count	Installed power (MW)	Count	Installed power (MW)
0–10	276	1434.934	3	16.14	170	806.376
10–25	136	2123.443	7	132.078	94	1566.183
25–50	52	1761	6	248.774	47	1673.96
50–100	26	1856.466	1	67.16	24	1699.128
100–200	11	1348.15	1	191.28	11	1422.148
200 <	13	7891.723	1	207.92	9	2937.68
Total	514	16,415.716	19	860.352	355	10,105.475

EMRA: Energy Market Regulatory Authority; HEPP: hydroelectric power plant.

According to the MENR, as one of the national energy goals, Turkey is planning to utilize the nation’s entire hydropower potential by 2023 (this year is the centenary of the republic). Domestic designing and production of electro-mechanic equipment is an essential part of the plan in order to keep the investments in the country and also to decrease the cost of hydroelectricity. According to analysis of EMRA for 2010–2030 period, total energy investment cost of Turkey is estimated as $225–280 billion and out of this total, the part for the equipment investment can be assumed as almost $100 billion.²⁷ Electro-mechanic equipment is mostly supplied by American, European, and Chinese companies. The only national company that is in this sector is a public corporation named TEMSAN (Turkish Electro-Mechanic Industry). National investments in hydropower sector are facing cost barrier due to lack of availability of affordable domestic electro-mechanic equipment. Although each project has its unique design conditions, a general assumption based on similar projects can be made for capital costs calculations. Hydro-turbine cost per kilowatt varies in the range of $975–1950, for which, in this study a representative value of $1300 will be used in calculations as average.²⁸ Based on this assumption, required total fund for hydro-turbines of total of 514 licensed HEPP projects with 16,415.716 MW installed power corresponds to about $21.34 billion. When maintenance and repair costs are also added to this fund, economical load of electro-mechanic equipment import can be pictured clearly. Recently, some universities, research centers, and private companies have begun to spare funds for the research and development of hydro-turbines in Turkey. Hydraulic turbine design and test center with the world’s second highest turbine test capacity (2 MW) newly established within the TOBB University, Ankara Turkey can be considered as a promising example.²⁹

As mentioned before, ability to design and manufacture electro-mechanic equipment for HEPPs is one of the national priorities in Turkey. In this respect, the current situation of HEPPs in Turkey should be emphasized in terms of installed power capacities. Thereby, a first start for the characteristics of unused hydropower potential can be identified to guide the research and production of necessary turbine types. However, such an analysis is possible with head (H) and discharge (Q) data of entire HEPPs of Turkey in planning or project stage. In Figure 4, 2D histograms of HEPPs under project stage (Figure 4(a)) and in operation (Figure 4(b)) under the ownership of national agencies (YEGM (Yenilenebilir Enerji Genel Mudurlugu), DSI, and EUAS) in Turkey are demonstrated according to the “H” and “Q” parameters and corresponding installed power values. A portion of the plotted data was obtained from the official correspondences with DSI and EUAS. The Q–H and installed capacity data presented in Figure 4(a) were assembled from YEGM. Figure 4(b) represents data (obtained from the official sources) of power plants operated by EUAS. Note that Q–H data for all of the HEPP projects are not readily available as open access data from a single official source.

With reference of YEGM, DSI, and EUAS data, 333 HEPPs in planning and project stage with a total of 10,891 MW installed power capacity are seen to be clustered in about 0–200 m³/s “discharge” and 0–500 m “head value” regions. On the other hand, 89 HEPPs in operation with 16,414 MW installed power are located in about 0–180 m³/s “discharge” and 0–240 m “head” ranges. The striking point in the histograms is the count distribution of HEPP projects in planning stage (Figure 4(a)). The significant rise in the 2D histogram for the planned projects contains nearly two-thirds of the projected installed capacity. The projects in planning stage (Figure 4(a)) are also distinguished by a large range of head (H) values but moderate to low discharge conditions. This region is where the peaks in the 2D histogram in (Figure 4(a)) are located. When the installed power is considered, 84% of the projects in planning stage are below 20 MW while this is about 37% for the power plants in operation. These observations indicate the significance of small hydro projects in utilizing the unused hydro potential in Turkey. Kaplan- and Francis-type turbines are known to be suitable (Kaplan for relatively low and/or varying discharge and low head conditions) for the range given in Figure 4(a). Note that the use of Kaplan-type turbines is very rare in Turkey presumably due to higher construction and operation costs. However, Kaplan turbines are known to be most appropriate especially for low head and varying discharge conditions.

On a different note, rehabilitation projects of existing hydropower plants in the past few years have resulted positively. The turbine efficiencies were improved by 2–6% depending on the type and age of the facility (EUAS). An average of 3% improvement in the overall equipment for the hydropower plants in operation results in about 3000 MW of extra installed capacity which is higher than the total power that would be gained from the small power plants in the 0–10 MW range. This comparison indicates that not only the power plants in projects stage but the existing ones with rehabilitation efforts will help reduce the gap between the economic and technical hydro potential.

As shown in Table 4 average electricity production of Keban HEPP is 6182 GW h between 2003 and 2009. After the rehabilitation in 2009, average production of the plant reached 6648 GW h and it corresponds to 466 GW h annual increment.

Table 4.

Electricity production of Keban HEPP over years.

HEPP	Installed power (MW)	Production (GW h)
HEPP	Installed power (MW)	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Keban	1330	6.376	7.905	6.695	7.281	6.105	4.959	3.959	7.959	6.331	5.654

HEPP: hydroelectric power plant.

In addition, a missing technology in Turkey is the pumped storage-type hydropower plants, PHEPP (Pumped-Storage hydroelectric power plants) (see Fitzgerald et al.³⁰ for an extended review on this issue). The problems with SHEPP investments such as the variability in the purchasing price within a day can be partially solved with employment of PHEPP-type turbines.

We note that the online data sources we used are official government webpages. The authors would be glad to share the data if some of the sources are not accessible publicly by the time this article is published.

Conclusions

This work shed light on the rarely elaborated aspects of the energy and HEPP data available from the official sources in Turkey. The presented results and the discussion lead to the conclusions listed as follows.

The overall progress in utilizing the hydropower potential is promising and the laws/regulations, almost in a way, evolve in an effort to fix the problems encountered on the way and continue to develop. However, as much as it is also inevitable that the hydropower (utilizing small hydropower) alone is not the remedy for energy security in Turkey now and in the future, it is important to use the hydro potential at its full potential for reducing the foreign dependency. DSI used to play an important role in planning, construction, and operation stages of HEPPs. But neutralization of this organization in the energy market, in general, seems to be the reason for some of the problems those are and will be slowing down, in particular, a strong growth of SHEPPs. The problems with the environmental impact, inspection, and operation of the HEPPs, in general, would be overcome by restoring the authority of this organization.

While the incentives and discounts encourage the investors, the coexisting or newly required extra fees such as water contribution share, in addition to fee for the right to use water, affect negatively the investors and as a result the national goals.

Another important cost and foreign dependence about energy issue in Turkey is the electro-mechanical equipment. Data and our analysis indicate the increasing numbers in small hydro power plants. The roadmap to reach the national goal certainly needs to involve the identification of types of the turbine technologies appropriate for the planned HEPPs and also the existing ones those can be improved by rehabilitation. Turkey is not designing and building (100% national) hydro-turbines but the high demand for small hydro power plants would be used to gear the research and development efforts toward the right direction in turbine market. Kaplan type and also turbine/pump (suitable for PHEEPs) equipment seem to be strong prospects in this regard. Establishing a national turbine design and manufacturing capability should also produce outcomes which also fit the needs in both the short and long term. To aid in this purpose, a dependable and continuously updated national database also needs to be built and be accessible to all associates and researchers.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The support of the Anadolu University-Scientific Research Projects Commission (grant number: 1401F025) is gratefully acknowledged.

Dr. Ahmet Ozan Celik is an assistant professor of hydraulics in the Department of Civil Engineering at Anadolu University. Dr. Calik has been doing fluvial hydraulics and energy related research since 2002. Dr. Celik got his undergraduate and masters degrees at Istanbul Technical University in 2002 and 2004 respectively. In 2011 he received his PhD degree of hydraulics at Virginia Tech, Blaksburg VA, US. Dr. Celik has authored and co-autored numerious articles some of which are in highly reputable journals such as Science, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Journal of Geophysical Research, Water Resources Research, Physics of Fluids. He has been serving as a reviewer in most of the journals in the hydraulics field. Ahmet Ozan Celik lives in Eskisehir, Turkey.

Volkan Kiricci is a PhD student and research assistant in the Department of Civil Engineering at Anadolu University. Kiricci has been doing computational fluid dynamics and energy related research since 2013. Kiricci received his undergraduate and masters degrees at Anadolu University in 2013 and 2016 respectively. Volkan Kiricci lives in Eskisehir, Turkey.

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