Conference: How Hydro Can Get its Mojo Back

July 18, 2022--Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--At last week's HYDROVISION International 2022 conference in Denver, there was generalized agreement among speakers and attendees that hydropower has been the poor stepchild of renewable energy, shoved aside by newer and shinier renewable resources such as solar and wind.

"It's awfully hard to get energy regulators to visit a hydro facility that's been running for 30-40 years compared to a ribbon-cutting for a new solar facility," commented conference speaker Ian Clark, founder and chief executive of Dichotomy Power LLC (Ridgefield, Connecticut), which operates 19 hydro projects in the Northeastern U.S.

For hydro, winning its due in a decarbonizing world is unlikely to be fast or easy. But speakers at the conference offered a few suggestions about operational, technical and public relations steps the industry could take to come out of the shadows and gain a larger share of the decarbonized electricity mix.