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International Hydroelectric Thread

Re: DOE report points to potential for increasing hydroelect

Unread postby Subjectivist » Sat 15 Apr 2017, 18:19:00

Anyone know if any of these thousands of upgrades were actually done?
II Chronicles 7:14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
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Re: Need to rant about Canadian hydroelectric sources!!

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 14 Mar 2018, 10:46:11

Nearly eight weeks after Massachusetts regulators chose Northern Pass Transmission as its preferred power line to carry Canadian hydropower to Bay State utilities, the project remains in limbo.

On Monday the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee, which blocked the project on Feb. 1, declined to issue an immediate decision on an appeal by Eversource Energy. The committee said it would suspend its decision on a rehearing until it issues a written order on its initial rejection, a document due March 31.

The problem for Eversource is that Massachusetts officials gave the project until March 27 to show progress in New Hampshire, or the transmission contract could go to Central Maine Power, which plans its own transmission line from the Canadian border.

If the committee won't reconsider, Eversource could appeal Northern Pass to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. However, that could introduce another year of delay, with no guarantee of victory.

Three Massachusetts utilities, in concert with Gov. Charlie Baker's Department of Energy Resources, last year solicited competitive bids for 9.45 gigawatt-hours of major clean energy imports. The committee in January chose Northern Pass and Hydro-Quebec for the lucrative contracts, rejecting four other transmission partnerships and dozens of renewable energy projects.

Eversource at the time said it was two years ahead of its competitors in terms of permitting. Eversource has all federal and international permits lined up, but still needs the New Hampshire permit to move forward. Northern Pass had proposed to go into service by the end of 2020.

Eversource on Monday said it understands New Hampshire's decision to suspend its decision pending a written order, and that its hopes the site evaluation committee "will evaluate the required statutory criteria, as well as thoroughly consider all of the conditions that could provide the basis for granting approval."

Gov. Charlie Baker's 2016 Energy Diversity Act calls for competitive purchases of 9.45 gigawatt-hours of clean energy by 2020, as well as a separate offshore wind procurement. The Massachusetts Clean Energy RFP was launched to implement that law.

The Northern Pass, first proposed in 2010, has drawn protests from host communities and New Hampshire residents. It has been fought by groups such as the Conservation Law Foundation, which said other New England transmission proposals would be less harmful to the environment.

The Eversource line would go from the Canadian border to a substation at Deerfield, New Hampshire, where it would tie into the six-state bulk power grid. The line would be buried as it passes through the White Mountains.

Attorney General Maura Healey said in January she will scrutinize the Baker administration's choice of Northern Pass in the Massachusetts Clean Energy RFP.

"Our role is to ensure that this bid was selected based on a transparent, competitive and fair evaluation of all the proposals submitted," a Healey spokeswoman said.


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Re: Need to rant about Canadian hydroelectric sources!!

Unread postby diemos » Wed 14 Mar 2018, 11:36:53

Just New Hampshire trying to extort more money for the right of way for the transmission line.

Politics as usual.
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Re: Maximized hydroelectric USA

Unread postby Tanada » Tue 14 May 2019, 11:50:36

New dam proposal in Sierra Nevada stirs debate over California energy policy

Up a remote canyon in the towering eastern Sierra, a Southern California company has an ambitious plan to dam the area’s cold, rushing waters and build one of the state’s first big hydroelectric facilities in decades.

The project, southeast of Yosemite near the town of Bishop (Inyo County), faces long regulatory odds as well as daunting costs. But residents of the Owens Valley downstream and state environmentalists are not taking it lightly.

The complex, as proposed in an application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last month, is scheduled for mostly federal land at the edge of the Inyo National Forest, partly in the popular John Muir Wilderness. It threatens to disrupt a landscape known for its brown trout and bighorn sheep, unparalleled alpine vistas, and pristine rivers and lakes.

Yet, the plan comes at a time when California is eager for clean, climate friendly energy, and renewed interest is emerging in hydroelectric plants. Such facilities are not always considered green; however, they offer a unique way of storing wind and solar power, which are cleaner but provide only sporadic contributions to the electrical grid.

The proposed “pumped-storage” project would essentially bank solar and wind energy by pumping creek water uphill when the power sources are plentiful, say during sunny or windy times, and conversely, send the water back down through power-producing turbines when the energy is needed.

“It’s a great way to manage the intermittency of renewable energy,” said Frank Wolak, an economics professor at Stanford University and director of the school’s Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, who called pumped storage “ideal” for helping the state scale up its clean power. “But the problem in California is siting the projects.”

Several federal and state agencies will have a say in whether a new, large hydroelectric undertaking is appropriate for California. Most regulators have only begun reviewing the proposal, though officials at the Inyo National Forest recently expressed concerns about disturbances to mountains, rivers and wildlife in a letter to the applicant.

The application for the facility was filed by Premium Energy Holdings LLC of Walnut (Los Angeles County). The company, which appears to be a consultant in the power sector, did not return multiple calls from The Chronicle.

FERC officials confirmed they’re considering the company’s request for a preliminary permit, which would simply grant Premium Energy an exclusive right to study the project. Before any construction could begin, the company would have to take the additional step of getting a license from FERC, a process that involves more review and more input.

California regulators have been wary of new hydroelectric facilities because of their sprawling environmental footprint, even when they can assist in meeting renewable energy goals. But some fear that the Trump administration could try to limit the state’s voice on the matter as part of a continuing effort to make public lands more accessible to industry.

“We are entering perilous times,” said Ron Stork, senior policy advocate for the environmental group Friends of the River and a longtime dam expert. “California has been shut out of any meaningful participation in FERC licensing. We are potentially entering an era where there’s no one but FERC or the licensee making the decisions.”

The proposed Owens Valley Pumped Storage Project, according to the FERC filing, would bring an elaborate series of dams, pumps and pipes to Lower Rock Creek Gorge, a rugged canyon of sagebrush and pine that’s commonly used by hikers and mountain bikers.

The process of storing and generating power would begin with three concrete dams, some more than 300 feet tall, that would capture water from Lower Rock Creek. The water in these reservoirs would then be pumped through pipelines thousands of feet uphill to three other reservoirs, built along 11,000-foot Wheeler Ridge in the John Muir Wilderness.

There, water would be held until electricity is needed, at which time the water would be released back downhill to three power-generating stations near the dams. The water could be recycled through the system as warranted, in what Premium Energy describes as a “closed-loop” hydroelectric operation.

As an alternative, the company proposes damming nearby Owens Valley River Gorge and similarly pumping water to reservoirs on Wheeler Ridge.

Either configuration would have an energy capacity of 5,200 megawatts, according to the FERC filing, a staggering amount of power that could meet the needs of a couple of million homes. The project would be California’s largest such operation.

Eight pumped storage sites currently operate in California, with a total capacity of 4,500 megawatts, according to the California Energy Commission. Wolak, at Stanford, said there’s a demand for plenty more facilities, given both the existing storage needs of wind and solar power and the future needs of the growing renewable sector.

California last year set an aggressive goal of getting 100 percent of its power from zero-emissions sources by 2045. While state law limits how much hydropower counts as clean energy, the storage potential of the plants alone is driving their resurgence.

“People see the need for what they provide, and developers are trying to get their licenses and work the deals,” said Jeff Leahey, head of governmental affairs for the National Hydropower Association. “In the past five to seven years, we really started to notice the increase in project proposals, particularly in the West.”

Preliminary permits for about a half dozen pumped-storage projects in California are being sought or were recently granted, FERC records show.

What makes the Owens Valley project different from several of the others — and more controversial — is that it proposes construction of new infrastructure instead of using existing hardware. Many pumped-storage operations piggyback on drinking-water reservoirs, like Lake Oroville, where water released from the reservoir is sometimes pumped back into the reservoir for power generation.

A proposal near Joshua Tree National Park would use old mining pits to hold water for generating electricity. Two other proposals, one at the San Vicente Dam near San Diego and one at Lake Elsinore in Riverside County, would add a single reservoir near an existing one to move water in between to produce power.

The Owens Valley project would build a total of six new reservoirs, a major ask that faces significant federal, state and local constraints. For starters, most development is banned in federally designated wilderness. Plus, residents and environmental groups are already raising concerns about a hydroelectric project chasing off threatened bighorn sheep and migrating deer, degrading water quality in the area’s many streams and simply shattering the natural beauty.

“I don’t know anybody who doesn’t support clean energy,” said Mono County resident Evan Russell, who has hiked the area along Lower Rock Creek hundreds of times. But “this would absolutely destroy the canyon.”

Most in the region remain flabbergasted about how something so big could be proposed for the sparsely developed eastern Sierra.

“Of course it was a surprise to people,” said Fran Hunt, a local organizer for the Sierra Club. “It’s really lit up the phone lines and people’s emails.”

Energy experts, who note that such an endeavor would likely cost billions of dollars, say the applicant may be pitching the project now as a longshot bet that it will become viable in the future. Others suggest that the applicant could be working with a larger company or utility that has the means and interest in moving a project forward quickly.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which has infrastructure in the area, is listed on the application as a possible recipient of the new energy. The utility has had a long and strained relationship with the residents of the Owens Valley over efforts to cull water and power from the region, dramatized in the 1974 movie “Chinatown.”

The utility did not return multiple calls from The Chronicle for comment.

Steve Evans, who tracks hydroelectric projects as program director of the California Wilderness Coalition, said he normally would dismiss the Owens Valley proposal as completely unrealistic. But with the Trump administration working to upend many of the nation’s environmental protocols, on top of state pressure to ramp up clean power, Evans said now anything seems possible.

“I’m sure Trump would love to stick it to California’s renewable energy program by approving a reservoir in a wilderness area,” he said. “All this is just really troubling.”


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Re: International Hydroelectric Thread

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 12 Mar 2022, 23:48:54

The topic of the new dam in Ethiopia came up in another thread so I looked up some relevant information for those with interest.
Ethiopian Dam Generates Power, but What’s Next?
The megaproject comes online, but will it fulfill its grand promise?

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a massive hydropower plant on the River Nile. The dam, located near Ethiopia’s shared border with Sudan, started generating electricity on 19 February 2022.

In the eyes of Ethiopia’s government, the future is a 145-meter-tall monument of rolled concrete and Francis turbines that spans the Blue Nile River within a shout of the Sudanese border.

That future shifted from vision to reality on 20 February, when Ethiopian president Abiy Ahmed (a Nobel Peace Prize winner who has since come under fire for alleged war crimes in the country’s ongoing civil war) pressed a virtual button that turned on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. GERD is by far Africa’s largest hydropower project.

That moment notwithstanding, GERD isn’t complete just yet. The dam’s reservoir is still filling, and the full force of both its power and its downstream effects is yet to be seen. And when you zoom out, Ethiopian authorities’ lack of transparency about the whole project is only clouding the future.

The GERD project is truly monumental, and not just because it’s taller than the Great Pyramid in Giza. When the dam is fully operational, its generating capacity will exceed 5,000 megawatts—at least in theory doubling Ethiopia’s electricity supply.

So, it’s not hard to see why the Ethiopian government is keen on seeing the dam through. Less than half of the country’s population has access to electricity; most of Ethiopia’s energy comes from biomass, in the form of traditional sources such as firewood and animal dung. The use of those materials is linked to deforestation and respiratory illness.

To be sure, there has been progress in the nation’s program of energy distribution: Ethiopia’s electrification has increased by an order of magnitude since 2000. Most of that electricity comes from relatively clean hydropower; the country has considerable hydro potential, and it has begun to harness it with other dams such as Tekeze and Gilgel Gibe.

Now, with the GERD operational, Ethiopia might fully electrify itself by the 2030s, without much fossil fuel in its energy mix. There’s even talk of selling power to neighboring countries—though the dam is located hundreds of kilometers from any major city, and it’s not clear if Ethiopia’s grid can handle GERD’s peak power, let alone transmit current to Sudan or Kenya.

Before any of that, the 50-billion-cubic-meter reservoir in GERD’s wake needs to fill up. Filling began in 2020, but the glass is still half full. The reservoir will need several more years before it reaches full size. As the reservoir level rises, it could eventually choke off some of the Blue Nile’s flow, shutting off the flow that joins the Nile at the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.

The region’s monsoon-driven climate will ultimately control how much water gets through. The throttle will be the amount of rain that falls during the wet season, between July and September. In 2021, for instance, the region saw more rain than average, minimizing the downstream effects.

But suppose a drought intensifies; suppose Ethiopia closes dam gates to force the reservoir to fill more quickly. Either, or both, could cut off the water flow and could impact hydropower plants like Sudan’s 280-MW Roseires Dam and Egypt’s 2,100-MW Aswan High Dam. “They have to think how to adapt the operation of the dam,” says Hisham Eldardiry, an energy and water security researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The Nile is much more than a hydropower resource. For millennia, people have relied on it for things like irrigating fields, and less water could harm environmentally sensitive breadbaskets downstream, such as the region around Khartoum and Egypt’s Nile Delta. Farmers might be forced to avoid crops with high water needs (rice, for instance, could be eliminated as a crop).

Eldaridry’s research has found that the effects will be dependent on how long the reservoir takes to fill. If it’s rapid—3 or 4 years—then the downstream impacts will be much less severe than if the Ethiopians slow down the filling—if it takes closer to 7 years.

But Ethiopia isn’t setting a firm target. For water managers downriver, that’s a problem. “They need to know how much water is coming so they can plan ahead for the irrigation season or the production of hydropower,” says Eldardiry.

That’s not the only area where the GERD dam managers have been less than transparent. For the better part of a decade, analysts have been criticizing the dam planners for their secrecy. In 2013, Ethiopian authorities detained a journalist who criticized the wholesale displacement of people by the dam’s construction.

The dam’s anticipated generation capacity has fluctuated a great deal over the years, from 6,500 MW down to 5,000 MW, amidst criticism that those high numbers only described the peak capacity during the wettest part of the rainy season. The dam’s Italian builders also conducted the dam’s feasibility study, a potential conflict of interest.

Still, the GERD is a remarkable energy project in an especially deprived part of the global south. Situated near an international border and directly impacting one of the world’s major river systems, its situation is unique and delicate. But Eldardiry says that there are a few lessons it can teach planners of other hydropower projects.

For one, he says, it’s important for governments to come together and reach agreements over resources—especially when it comes to projects like the GERD, whose effects ripple across multiple countries. “Reaching an agreement would have solved a lot of the problems,” says Eldardiry.

Another takeaway: There are few things as important as what Ethiopia hasn’t done—sharing data.

IEEE Article
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: International Hydroelectric Thread

Unread postby Doly » Sun 13 Mar 2022, 16:59:28

Over 50,000 projects to tap a total of less than 4GW. Sounds crazy. Most of the dams are below 1 MW and are probably fed by very intermittent streams.


That would make some sense if the intention was using them as a basic form of electricity storage, maybe?
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