Exhibitors Upbeat at HYDROVISION International 2022

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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Business was going well for exhibitors at last week's HYDROVISION International 2022 conference in Denver. In a dozen exhibition-floor interviews at the first in-person HYDROVISION conference since 2019, company representatives had a steady, upbeat view of their business.

Several of those interviewed have business outside hydropower. One said: "Our Gulf Coast business is booming. Power plants are still being built there, and the liquefied natural gas (LNG) business is going great. We're hiring, and it isn't easy to find workers."

Another exhibitor, asked for the reasons for his success, gave partial credit to the COVID-19 pandemic: "I think the pandemic caused workers at our competitors, and some clients, to put in their papers and retire. That kind of cleared the playing field and made it a little easier to win work."

Those whose primary business was hydropower echoed frustration voices by speakers at the July 12-14 conference, which drew more than 1,700 attendees from 34 countries. In the U.S., new-build work remains stymied by regulation and costs, but maintenance work continued to flow.

For more from HYDROVISION International 2022, see July 14, 2022, article - Hydro Interests Fight to Keep Dams Operating in Pacific Northwest; July 15, 2022, article - Can Pumped-Storage Hydro be Jump-Started by Thinking Small?; and July 18, 2022, article - Conference: How Hydro Can Get its Mojo Back.

Several exhibitors expressed amazement that hydro was not growing faster, given its role as a dispatchable, non-emitting resource. But several echoed a comment from a conference speaker: "Hydro is not always part of the renewables conversation, though it should be," Michael Pullinger, president of Energy Resolution Services (Houston, Texas), said July 13.

Hydro deserves a more prominent role in the electricity mix as the U.S. decarbonizes its electricity industry, conference exhibitors agreed. Several were disappointed that solar and wind had captured the attention of the public and elected officials, leaving hydro advocates with beautiful photos but scant public-policy support. Groused one exhibitor: "It's like what one speaker said, 'You can't get regulators to visit an existing hydro facility, because they're too busy going to ribbon-cuttings for new solar facilities.' "

Exhibitors told Industrial Info they were eager to see how the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Department of Energy distribute billions of dollars in support for hydropower as part of last year's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

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