Don't Forget to Feed The Hydros'
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 02.16.06
North America's Post-WWII growth was highly dependent on hydroelectric power. And it wasn't that 'freemarket" thing either (clue:--> "Hoover Dam"). The last Federal hydroelctric dam was authorized for Idaho's Snake river in the mid-1950's, and it was 1958 when the US Congress rejected the fourteenth and last proposed bill for a federal dam. That's almost a half century ago. Coal and nuclear generation met US electricity demand growth from there onward. There's a similar tale to tell for Canada. Enough history. Scattered across the continent are hundreds of public and private hydroelectric facilities in varying states of maintenance. Some of the dams are unstable and threaten downstream safety. Many were long ago stripped of their antique turbines, and buildings converted to "boutique" uses.
Some of the Federal projects are old enough that they could use a technology upgrade. Modern turbines can be roughly twice as efficient as the old originals. And here lies the stealth climate mitigation weapon well under the radar of mainstream media (although we imagine that GE could hum the tune if asked to). While many of us have been focused on wind and solar generation projects that can't function without major grid upgrades, the existing hydro sites, large and small, are grid contiguous. They need new licenses, capital, and more efficient designs. Somebody must have looked at a bunch of scenarios for what this could offer to the nation as a whole???
Or not. The permits needed for hydroelectric facility upgrades are granted at the state and Federal levels. While there certainly are legitimate environmental issues to think about, activists will have to decide categorically whether they will allow "fish and wildlife" to be used as a generic tool to protect the local interests of property owners and the tourist/outdoor sport industries, allowing the climate protection and energy independence opportunities to slip away. We see this as analogous to trotting out the "bird kill" meme to protect property values from wind farms.
For a look what is being planned in your "neck of the woods", we suggest you log on onto the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) website here. Unlike wind farm proposals, FERC keeps close tabs on all the license applications, and characterizes their size and importance.
In Perspective:
Hydro upgrades can be significant new source of green energy for climate change mitigation and for weaning ourselves from dependency on imported natural gas. The Swedish example is paramount.
Caveats:
We're definitely not arguing for the siting of new hydroelectric facilities. Not even one. The point is to think about a source of reliable proven green energy that investors and owners have either abandoned or failed to bring to current technology standards. They are trees not seen for the forest of fossil fuel intrigue.
Finally, we realize that there are some hydroelectric reservoirs in existance for which the best outcome would be dam removal. But this is certainly not the predominant case.
Brainstorming
One way forward would be to have a team of Federal and State agency staff list existing facilities by cost benefit potential: i.e. MW of efficiency gain projected per $Million invested in upgrades. Distribute the list on the web and ask local officials and interest groups to nominate sites for consideration by Congress, where water rights are public, or by private developers, where appropriate; but, with a special provision. Local citizens are given a opportunity to become stockholders in each private development nominated, with a possibility of taking dividends in green energy futures. Etc.
===== Breaking News Update From Seattle PI News =======
"...the [proposed Federal] budget also calls for the BPA to redirect all revenue from the sale of surplus [hydro-electric] power beyond $500 million to the federal treasury. Analysts say that would drain $1 billion from the BPA over the next 10 years and increase residential power rates by 7 percent".
where are the three lead pics from, john?
=== author's response follows =====
From the FERC site linked to within the story. I don't believe they were identified by name however.
The only way to get the government to do something is through lobbying.. this is a worthwhile cause and I think GE probably would interested in it like you said. If you were to continue to report on the issue I think other bloggers would pick it up and.. you get the idea.
==== author's response follows =====
The irony is that Westinghouse (original turbine maker) may be foreign owned and it's parent also foreign...so all the profits would flow back overseas if GE did not do the work.
A grass-roots impetus would come only when the majority of US citizen connect the dots between: skyrocketing electric bills, the urban asthma epidemic, mercury poisoned fish, blackouts, and extreme weather impacts. That would take years: so I agree that in normal times it would have to be the utilities joined by the hydro-facility equipment makers lobbying behind closed doors to move it forward in Congress. Problem is, lobbyists are lately....how shall we say this?...."up a creek without a paddle".
I'm afraid I just don't see an opening here. Ideas anyone?
Some great ideas John. Any idea how long it would take to rework one of these facilities?
With so many of the - ahem - alternatives still years off from being large players, solutions like this - trees not seen for the forest of fossil fuel intrigue - could really fill a gap...
==== author's response follows =====
Administratively: -- assuming the riparian community, municipality/county/state support is there, and funding or loans available, 2 to 6 years each.
Technically: -- The basic civil engineering is simple and design standards for the earthworks and dams are probably established (guess) as a matter of state codes. The main issues would be supply of best available technology and potential conflict with some of the older state/city codes. Solution is for Federal Gov't to define some best practices for layout and for equipment performance so we not would see two-bit engineering firms low balling their bids to get the work, resulting in iron age, manually controlled, expensive to operate designs instead of web-enabled monitoring and tainter gate/voltage controls.
Biggest obstacle: -- removal of historically deposite sediment. Many of the older reservoirs have been silted in to the point where in aerial photos you'll see a "meander" through the old reservoir and the rest just mud flats or shallows covered with emergent aquatic plants. The solution is straightforward. Drain completely in summer. Let sediment de-water over winter and through following summer, while the dam repairs/re-construction is underway. Remove debris (cars, bikes, logs, etc) and dig out the silt and use for landscaping, mine restoration, quarry fill, or soil amendments in the upper watershed, making sure to time the spreading so it will revegetate. Then as the generating equipment is being installed, work with upstream riparian owners to put better soil conservation practices in place. Federal budget for this has disappeared in the last two decades, so my suggestion would be to use cheap electricity as the carrot and withholding of flood insurance as the stick, with City/County administration of the ordinances needed to keep the grassed waterways and setbacks in place. Maybe getting riparian ag land out of corn and into ethanol producing switchgrass would be a smart move??? Extra incentives for that, and so on.
The hidden dragon is PCB/lead contaminated sediment. In my world view we need to change our collective thinking about the benefits of containing the sediment contaminants removed from old mill ponds at a Superfund budget compared to the risk of trashing the planet with CO2 made from mercury emitting coal. Let common sense prevail here: the tradeoffs are intuitively obvious. This would be a legit reason to redo RCRA and Superfund rules in a targeted way instead of going for the deregulatory utiopian grand slam as seems to be the intent of Congress presently.
I could go on but you get the idea.
I could go on but you get the idea
Wow, that was a response and a half. Thanks! I get more than the idea :-)
(some things in there I hadn't thought of in a while - rusty parts of the brain are starting to move..)
Excellent ideas there.
The National Hydropower Assocaition's forecast below says that 20,915 MW of additional power could be generated without building new dams.
http://www.hydro.org/hydrofacts/forecast.asp
That's a huge amount of power and I believe the upgrades should be started as soon as possible.