Hydro
Costs, Comparative Costs to other sources of Power, and Comparative to average costs.
Hydroelectricity usualluy depends on the place its produced in, but generally hydroelectricity is the cheapest energy on Earth.The cost of hydroelectricity is relatively low, making it a competitive source of renewable electricity. The average cost of electricity from a hydro plant larger than 10 megawatts is 3 to 5 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour.
Hydroelectricity is very efficient. Power plants can harness about 90% of the energy generated by moving water. This is also very inexpensive. In the U.S. hydropower is produced for an average of 0.7 cents per kilowatt-hour. This is about one-third the cost of using fossil fuel or nuclear and one-sixth the cost of using natural gas. Efficiency could be further increased by refurbishing hydroelectic equipment. An improvement of only 1% would supply electricity to an additional 300,000 households.
The initial investment for hydro is high to build,the dam/reservior and its power plant that may vary from 250 million dollars up to 1.25 billion dollars. the positive thing about this though is the fact that it will run about 40 to 50 years, but it also coct alot to build even though it doesnt take that long to come up with a design to build it. comparing to the cost of electricity with the initail investment the pay back period is short.