From devastating tsunamis to being pulled by the current while swimming at the beach, we are innately familiar with the force and power of moving water. The ancient Romans used water powered mills to turn grain to flour; Welsh miners used water power to extract valuable metals from the earth as early as the first century A.D.
Today, behemoths like the Hoover Dam and the Grand Coulee Dam are the best known examples of hydropower production, but their time is running out. A long history of dam collapses and large-scale environmental destruction have dethroned major dams as the go-to source of water-generated electricity, and a wide range of new methods and technologies are being developed to make hydropower the energy of the future.
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