Looking at the hydro CFs in other countries, I see that the 61% figure for Canada (2000) is anomalous - nearly twice that of countries like the US, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, etc. (no doubt due to the preponderance of very large, reliable reservoirs, running baseload plants).
Sweden comes close, in 2000, with 55.1% (Canadian hydro CF dropped to 56.6% in 1998; the US had a good year in 1997, with 44.8% CF).
Many other countries are a lot lower - like Czech hydro, at 12.6% CF - about as useful as windmills.
In the early 90s I worked on a couple of new hydro plants in Quebec -- the Laforge-2 plant in James Bay (photo) - one of the smaller ones in that area, at about 270MWe installed capacity (a so-called run-of-river plant, with high CF likely - and the Hydromega minihydro plant at the St.Catherines locks on the St.Lawrence Seaway just south of Montreal (a low-head, multi-unit plant with siphon penstocks taking advantage of the water level difference at the locks.... also likely to have a high CF).
Jaro
