According to recent hydropower inventories, the first aim of this paper is to prove that Greece is a real "Archimedean Soft Small Hydro Development Terra Incognita". It is a country in the Era of Transition of nowad...According to recent hydropower inventories, the first aim of this paper is to prove that Greece is a real "Archimedean Soft Small Hydro Development Terra Incognita". It is a country in the Era of Transition of nowadays, having an important unexploited hydropower potential of several TWh and thousands of MW. The second goal is to present the results of rediscovering the old screw pumps and the always-modern Archimedean cochlear screw ideas as a series of soft hydropower turbines with inclined axis rotors and floating spiral screw devices. By following the similarity methodology, a few small-scale models of cochlear rotors were designed, developed and tested in an Armfield hydraulic channel. The conventional and unconventional, low or zero-head screw turbines, could efficiently harness the important and unexploited Greek small potential and kinetic hydraulic energy of all the natural watercourses, the man-made open urban or rural channels and the most important tidal or sea currents, producing useful green electricity. The very promising low-head hydropower inventory of Greece, the preliminary experimental results and the research studies of cochlear projects in watercourses, hydraulic works, tidal conditions of Euripus Strait and in the mysterious "Sea River Current of Cephalonia", seems to give a good answer to the question "Quo Vadis Archimedes nowadays in Greece, in the Era of Transition?".展开更多
文摘According to recent hydropower inventories, the first aim of this paper is to prove that Greece is a real "Archimedean Soft Small Hydro Development Terra Incognita". It is a country in the Era of Transition of nowadays, having an important unexploited hydropower potential of several TWh and thousands of MW. The second goal is to present the results of rediscovering the old screw pumps and the always-modern Archimedean cochlear screw ideas as a series of soft hydropower turbines with inclined axis rotors and floating spiral screw devices. By following the similarity methodology, a few small-scale models of cochlear rotors were designed, developed and tested in an Armfield hydraulic channel. The conventional and unconventional, low or zero-head screw turbines, could efficiently harness the important and unexploited Greek small potential and kinetic hydraulic energy of all the natural watercourses, the man-made open urban or rural channels and the most important tidal or sea currents, producing useful green electricity. The very promising low-head hydropower inventory of Greece, the preliminary experimental results and the research studies of cochlear projects in watercourses, hydraulic works, tidal conditions of Euripus Strait and in the mysterious "Sea River Current of Cephalonia", seems to give a good answer to the question "Quo Vadis Archimedes nowadays in Greece, in the Era of Transition?".