Serving mainly for irrigation water supply and flood control, the dam also has a hydroelectric generating capacity of 36 megawatts.

Rikuden has 1,905 MW of hydroelectric capacity through 128 separate generating stations.

Installed hydroelectric capacity in 2005 was 480 MW, distributed amongst some 21 facilities.

Although high, this number does not capture the vulnerability of the generation system to particular unit outages, especially those related to hydroelectric capacity and availability.

This expansion of the hydroelectric capacity would add 351MW to the system in the next 5 years, a 76% increase in current capacity.

Additional hydroelectric generating capacity was added into the 1970s.

Georgia has a sizable hydroelectric capacity, a factor that has become an increasingly important component of its energy supplies and policies.

Uruguay has no proven natural gas or oil reserves but it does have substantial hydroelectric capacity.

"We use less than 15pc of hydroelectric capacity," he says.

It is also expected that, by 2012, an additional 762MW of hydroelectric capacity will have been added to the generation system.