Released July 22, 2024 | SUGAR LAND
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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Two visions about the future of hydropower in the U.S. were laid out in the keynote address for the HYDROVISION International 2024 conference, held in Denver, Colorado, July 17-18 and sponsored by Clarion Energy LLC (Clarion, Pennsylvania). Roughly 1,000 attendees were on hand to hear the July 15 keynote.
Corey Vezina, Hydropower Program Manager at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) (Washington, D.C.), provided the "glass is half full" perspective, noting that U.S. hydropower electric capacity additions totaled about 2.1 gigawatts (GW) between 2010 and 2022. In addition, there are 118 hydro projects being developed currently, many of which plan to add power generation to dams that have none. Most of those non-power dams are located east of the Mississippi River.
President Joe Biden's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 include three categories of incentives for hydropower developers, Vezina continued.
Other conference speakers noted that it has been two decades since a large PSP was built in the U.S.
Vezina didn't claim that all was rosy in Hydropower Land. Instead, the impression was that the positives outweighed the negatives. As a non-emitting electric generation resource, hydropower is an increasingly vital electric generation resource. PSPs add an equally important ability to store clean energy. PSPs are power-intensive facilities, but building a PSP near a solar or wind generation facility would allow the PSP's operations to be powered by clean energy.
A heavy dose of reality was supplied by another keynote speaker at the HYDROVISION event: Tom Roode, chief of operations and maintenance at Denver Water (Denver, Colorado), the water utility that provides water to 1.5 million customers in and around Denver.
Denver Water spent 20 years working its way through nearly a dozen federal, state and local permit applications to expand the size of its Gross Reservoir near Boulder, Colorado. This construction project, valued at about $531 million, will raise the height of the dam 131 feet, increasing its water-storage capacity by about 77,000 acre-feet. One acre-foot, about 326,000 gallons, is sufficient to meet the water of needs of one to two families of four for one year.
Gross Reservoir was built to store water, not generate electricity, though the expansion project will add about 675 kilowatts of capacity to the existing 8.1 megawatts (MW) of capacity, Roode told conference attendees. Pre-construction activities took place between 2022 and 2024, and this past May concrete started to be poured on the expansion, which is scheduled to finish in 2027.
"We live in an arid climate that gets about 15 inches of snow per year," Roode said. When it comes to water, the fast-growing metropolitan Denver area "is at the mercy of Mother Nature." Most of the state's water is consumed by agriculture.
The Denver Water executive said his company is facing an aging infrastructure coupled with increased demand for water. Inflation remains a challenge as well.
But asked about the biggest challenge facing the water and hydropower industry, he did not hesitate: Licensing. "The current licensing process makes it harder to make investment decisions." He said he would prefer a simpler, streamlined and faster licensing process.
The hydro relicensing process is so drawn-out and cumbersome that Denver Water is considering siting some wind or solar generation near existing hydroelectric facilities so it doesn't have to go through the lengthy relicensing process over the next five years, Roode said.
The cost to perform required studies to relicense a dam has risen by a factor of 10, he said, largely because there are fewer trained professionals that can perform them. "It's getting more and more complicated" to relicense a hydroelectric dam, he added.
Commenting on the cost of the federal relicensing process, Roose said, "We have to consider how our decisions will financially impact customers."
The need to streamline the federal hydro dam relicensing process is red meat to hydro supporters, and other speakers and attendees at the event rued the time and money that is spent on that process. Efforts have been made to streamline that process, but it is not clear those updates will allow hydropower to achieve its full potential.
Hydroelectric power accounts for about 28% of all utility-scale renewable electric generation in the U.S., said DOE's Vezina. He did not hazard a guess about what it could be with a faster relicensing process.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) platform helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).
Corey Vezina, Hydropower Program Manager at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) (Washington, D.C.), provided the "glass is half full" perspective, noting that U.S. hydropower electric capacity additions totaled about 2.1 gigawatts (GW) between 2010 and 2022. In addition, there are 118 hydro projects being developed currently, many of which plan to add power generation to dams that have none. Most of those non-power dams are located east of the Mississippi River.
President Joe Biden's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 include three categories of incentives for hydropower developers, Vezina continued.
- Hydroelectric Production Incentives (Section 242)
- Hydroelectric Efficiency Improvement Incentives (Section 243), and
- Maintaining and Enhancing Hydroelectricity Incentives (Section 247)
Other conference speakers noted that it has been two decades since a large PSP was built in the U.S.
Vezina didn't claim that all was rosy in Hydropower Land. Instead, the impression was that the positives outweighed the negatives. As a non-emitting electric generation resource, hydropower is an increasingly vital electric generation resource. PSPs add an equally important ability to store clean energy. PSPs are power-intensive facilities, but building a PSP near a solar or wind generation facility would allow the PSP's operations to be powered by clean energy.
A heavy dose of reality was supplied by another keynote speaker at the HYDROVISION event: Tom Roode, chief of operations and maintenance at Denver Water (Denver, Colorado), the water utility that provides water to 1.5 million customers in and around Denver.
Denver Water spent 20 years working its way through nearly a dozen federal, state and local permit applications to expand the size of its Gross Reservoir near Boulder, Colorado. This construction project, valued at about $531 million, will raise the height of the dam 131 feet, increasing its water-storage capacity by about 77,000 acre-feet. One acre-foot, about 326,000 gallons, is sufficient to meet the water of needs of one to two families of four for one year.
Gross Reservoir was built to store water, not generate electricity, though the expansion project will add about 675 kilowatts of capacity to the existing 8.1 megawatts (MW) of capacity, Roode told conference attendees. Pre-construction activities took place between 2022 and 2024, and this past May concrete started to be poured on the expansion, which is scheduled to finish in 2027.
"We live in an arid climate that gets about 15 inches of snow per year," Roode said. When it comes to water, the fast-growing metropolitan Denver area "is at the mercy of Mother Nature." Most of the state's water is consumed by agriculture.
The Denver Water executive said his company is facing an aging infrastructure coupled with increased demand for water. Inflation remains a challenge as well.
But asked about the biggest challenge facing the water and hydropower industry, he did not hesitate: Licensing. "The current licensing process makes it harder to make investment decisions." He said he would prefer a simpler, streamlined and faster licensing process.
The hydro relicensing process is so drawn-out and cumbersome that Denver Water is considering siting some wind or solar generation near existing hydroelectric facilities so it doesn't have to go through the lengthy relicensing process over the next five years, Roode said.
The cost to perform required studies to relicense a dam has risen by a factor of 10, he said, largely because there are fewer trained professionals that can perform them. "It's getting more and more complicated" to relicense a hydroelectric dam, he added.
Commenting on the cost of the federal relicensing process, Roose said, "We have to consider how our decisions will financially impact customers."
The need to streamline the federal hydro dam relicensing process is red meat to hydro supporters, and other speakers and attendees at the event rued the time and money that is spent on that process. Efforts have been made to streamline that process, but it is not clear those updates will allow hydropower to achieve its full potential.
Hydroelectric power accounts for about 28% of all utility-scale renewable electric generation in the U.S., said DOE's Vezina. He did not hazard a guess about what it could be with a faster relicensing process.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) platform helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).
