HydroVision Conference Speakers Showcase Hydro's Potential

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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--When you bring over 3,000 hydropower professionals together at the world's largest hydropower event, enthusiasm is bound to predominate. That enthusiasm suffused three days of conference sessions here in Denver last week at the annual HydroVision International conference and exhibit, sponsored by PennWell (Tulsa, Oklahoma).

Marla Barnes, publisher and chief editor of PennWell's hydro group of publications, got things started at the June 27 keynote session by proclaiming, "Hydro continues to grow around the world," noting that around the world, about 35,000 megawatts (MW) of new hydroelectric projects (including pumped storage projects) began operating in 2016. In the U.S., she continued, renewable energy generation, paced by hydro, surpassed electric output from nuclear power plants for the first time ever, according to the April issue of the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Electric Power Monthly report.

"Hydro is where it is happening," she told an estimated 600 attendees at the keynote session.

Other speakers in the June 27 keynote session, and during the subsequent break-out sessions, echoed Barnes' upbeat assessment of hydropower. Robert Rowe, president and chief executive at NorthWestern Energy (Butte, Montana), a unit of NorthWestern Corporation (NYSE:NWE) (Sioux Falls, South Dakota), detailed his company's purchase of 11 run-of-river hydroelectric generating plants in 2013 for $900 million. That transaction, which brought 633 MW of hydro generation capacity plus one storage reservoir to NorthWestern Energy, brought to 58% the portion of its electricity generated by renewable resources.

"Hydro is the original distributed generation," Rowe told conference attendees. The transaction dramatically lowered the carbon intensity of NorthWestern Energy's electric supply and brought the utility well under the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions rate contained in the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan (CPP), he added. The Trump administration is in the process of revising the CPP.

Rowe and other speakers lauded hydropower as "the original renewable fuel," citing its properties as affordable, reliable and non-emitting.

Several speakers said there was a lot of unfilled potential for hydropower, around the world but also in the U.S. These speakers referenced "Hydropower Vision: A New Chapter for America's 1st Renewable Electricity Source," a report released last summer by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) (Washington, D.C.) that said an additional 50,000 MW, or 50 gigawatts, of new hydroelectric generating capacity could be brought online in the U.S. by 2050.

Most of this potential new hydro capacity--about 35,500 MW--could come in the form of pumped storage projects, the report said. An additional 6,300 MW of new generating capacity could come from upgrading existing hydroelectric generation. Adding generators to non-power dams could add another 4,800 MW while a further 1,750 MW of new hydro generation could come from new forms of stream-reach development. Expanding hydroelectric generation would obviously contribute a non-emitting source of generation, lowering greenhouse gas emissions by 5.6 billion metric tons, the report predicted. But the benefits outlined in DoE's "50 by 50" report extend beyond climate change. Expanding the U.S. hydroelectric fleet would also create 195,000 new jobs, avoid 30 trillion gallons of water use and prevent up to 5 million cases of acute respiratory symptoms, the report forecast.

No speaker at this conference doubted the multiple streams of benefits that could be generated by expanding the hydroelectric fleet. But the gritty reality of today is the need to invest in maintaining and rehabilitating the nation's existing hydroelectric generators. "We're facing a real challenge in maintaining our hydroelectric operations," Major General Scott Spellmon, commander of the northwestern division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the largest owner/operator of hydroelectric plants in the U.S.

The challenge is a function of the U.S. not maintaining its hydro infrastructure compared to other nations, such as China, Japan and Australia. "We have faced a three-fold increase in forced outages" at the Army Corps' hydro stations, Spellmon told HydroVision attendees. "We have an infrastructure challenge because many of our facilities are 80 years old," he said, adding that operators have not been able to make the necessary investments to maintain and upgrade those facilities.

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