Abstract
This paper presents a brief history of rediscovering the old Archimedean screw pumps as a series of modern and efficient Archimedean hydropower turbines, including floating spiral screw devices, for harnessing the important and unexploited Greek small hydraulic energy potential, producing useful green electricity. The recent research concerns some Archimedean small hydropower applications, with inclined axis, in cascade and in parallel, for a series of low-head sites in small watercourses and large rivers, and for a series of horizontal floating screws, exploiting the kinetic energy of rivers, open channels and tidal currents. The inclined-axis Archimedean turbines within pipes or troughs, and the horizontal-axis Archimedean kinetic energy conversion systems, harnessing the unexploited flowing kinetic hydraulic potential of watercourses, open channels, and coastal or tidal currents seem to prove the importance of the “back to the future” rediscovering the Archimedean ideas. The two kinds of Archimedean screw hydropower plants tend to emphasize jumping between the past and future, and to find the most reliable sustainable development way for Greece through the obstacles of the actual transition period.