Trevor, Trevor.
We are talking about *adding* capacity. Please try to keep up.
Now the fact is, known to everyone that has even a little physics, that hydro power turns potential energy into electricity. The only way you can extract more power from a finite amount of water with a finite head is to keep stacking turbines further down the gravity well. Eventually you'll get too little head for this to work, when the water gets to sea level if not sooner. It isn't perpetual motion, you know.
In addition, you need to keep the water reasonably compact ie you need choke points to force the flow through, to keep the water velocity high enough to effeciently drive turbines. There *is* a reason, you know, why hydro plants don't use undershot wheels or even overshot wheels.
Now, given this, just how in hell do you propose to extract a large amount of extra energy from existing hydro schemes, especially without further altering the fluvial structures downstream of the existing dams? You *do* realise that inundating hundreds of square kilometers of productive land for another dam has at least 3 very negative side effects, don't you? I refer to loss of land for other productive purposes, environmental damage and a mbuttive *increase* in CO2, methane et al when the existing vegetation gets end off & begins to rot after it's flooded.
You honestly haven't a clue, have you? You're just parrotting whatever you read in some fuzzy little magazine somewhere, where warm feelings are counted a lot higher than engineering.
PDW
