New hydro turbine pumps 13 gigawatts

In the United States, traditional hydropower from dams provides roughly 10% of all electricity. Many of these hydro plants are a century or more old with embedded technology that is far from the 21st century in terms of productivity for every gallon that passes by.

Thus, opportunities exist for taking existing hydropower facilities and making them more productive with the current water resources. Plus, literally thousands of dams and spillways across the country don't have existing electricity production at all.

But modernization operations can cost millions and take years to go through regulatory processes that seek to minimize environmental impacts. The hydro industry often comments that the hydro regulatory process is more difficult than nuclear power's.

Is there an opportunity for getting a quick 3% to 7% increase at existing hydropower facilities and to put electricity production at some non-power producing dam sites with a far easier regulatory process, low per-kilowatt installation costs (with nearly free fuel), and do so quickly?

Until yesterday, at WIREC, the options didn't really seem apparent. Now, however, my head is whirling with the possibilities.

Hyrdo Green Energy has developed a hydro-kinetic power system that can be placed in-stream for generating power along rivers without the massive installation requirements of a dam and, thus, minimal implications on the river's natural flow. This approach got some attention a couple years ago and seemed quite cool at the time.

This developer mount their system on a barge, lowering the turbine into the water, rather than building from the river bottom (or damning the river), and generating power from the river's current. The barge enables moving the system as needed and also provides a platform for any required maintenance.

This looks like a way to quickly establish power generation on rivers around the world at relatively low cost and in a distributed fashion.

A specific application of their technology, one that they are actively pursuing for a test program in Minnesota, seems like a valuable way to help change the energy equation.

Rather than putting the system somewhere on a river, for example, independent of existing infrastructure, Hydro Green will be putting one of their systems in the spillway of an existing dam.

What are some of the benefits of this approach?

• It is reusing a resource, gaining more power from the water that has already generated power. This is a quick "boost" to the plant's energy efficiency.
• The dam has existing infrastructure (such as transformers, power lines) that can be used to move the power to market.
• Permitting processes are, as mentioned, a real nightmare for hydro projects. This is already in a spillway, so the licensing process is different and within the existing plant's "capacity." It should lower the cost/time for getting permitted.
  [Note: fast permitting isn't necessarily "good," but let's work through the negatives here. The only serious one (and it does matter) seems to be the impact on fish that have gone through the dam and are disoriented coming through the turbine. Thus, this merits better understanding and evaluation before this technology is deployed on a massive scale.]
• If it works as promised, this is a fast way to increase clean power production from existing facilities with hopefully minimal environmental impact.