Using the Internet to Disseminate Information on Micro Hydropower
Abstract
Micro hydropower has proven to be a technology with huge potential to provide energy to individual households and small villages. Particularly in Asia the technology has seen large uptake, with Africa as an area where only limited activity has taken place up till recently. Several technical publications are available, either as hardcopy books or downloadable from the internet in softcopy, describing the microhydro technology in great amount of detail. However, as the application of the technology is very site specific, sharing of examples and best practices has proven to be a very welcome addition to these text books. In addition to these more static exchanges of information, interaction amongst microhydro plant owners and potential developers of such sites has proven to be very effective as information dissemination techniques. This article will focus on the use of the Internet to build a virtual community around the technology of microhydro to boast the uptake of the technology by analyzing the microhydropower.net internet portal and the associated email and web discussion forum.