POWER July 2011 - 44

RENEWABLES
Hydro: The Forgotten Renewable
Rebounds
When President Obama unveiled his " clean energy standard " in the 2011 State
of the Union address in February, and again when he spoke of his administration's
energy policy in late March, one form of electrical energy was
conspicuous by its absence: hydropower. Hydro is the forgotten form,
the politically incorrect renewable, the invisible generation. To borrow the
complaint of comedian and Caddyshack movie star Rodney Dangerfield,
hydro projects " don't get no respect. "
By Kennedy Maize
H
ydroelectric power, the oldest form of
power on the planet, is a far more significant
source of U.S. electricity than
trendy technologies such as wind, sun, and
heat from the Earth-combined. According
to Energy Information Administration 2009
figures, hydro (conventional and pumped storage)
provides 98.5 GW of nameplate generating
capacity in the U.S. Wind, solar, wood,
geothermal, and other biomass generation account
for 51.6 GW of nameplate capacity.
Hydro requires no fossil fuels, emits no air
pollution at all (including carbon dioxide), is
reliable and dispatchable, works well in baseload
or peaking modes, and provides valuable
ancillary services such as frequency support.
In short, hydro has all the operational characteristics
of fossil plants but with the values
we have come to associate with renewable
generation.
But hydro has other attributes not associated
with the au courant crowd of renewables.
Hydro projects can provide flood control
(Figure 1), drinking water, and recreational
opportunities. It even can increase property
values: Folks often pay a premium to live
around hydro impoundments but often take a
hit living near wind and solar energy farms.
Hydro power was also the first form of
power that environmentalists learned to hate.
It gobbles up large chunks of land, alters both
land and water ecosystems, kills migratory
fish, and presents engineers with safety challenges.
John Muir created the Sierra Club to
fight hydro in California's high Sierra Nevadas.
Dave Brower made the club famous 50
years later-and got himself fired-opposing
hydro in the Grand Canyon (and supporting
a nuclear project named Diablo Canyon). In
1988, the group that Brower hatched after his
ejection from the Sierra Club-Friends of the
Earth-launched a decades-long project to
take down existing power dams in the hydrorich
Pacific Northwest.
44
Hydro Is Heavily Regulated
Historically, hydro politics and economics
often have presaged the trials of nuclear power.
Both were largely born of the federal government
and continue to live by Uncle Sam's
largesse. Both gobble large amounts of capital
up front but generate power cheaply once
built. Both are heavily regulated by a central,
independent federal agency-the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission for the nukes
and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC) for water power. Both can suffer
catastrophic accidents of low probability but
large impact. Both represent enticing targets
for terrorist attacks. Hydro, of course, got its
baptism in controversy well before nuclear
energy arrived on the generating scene.
But there are significant differences between
the two generating technologies, primarily
in scale. Whereas the image of hydro
is the large concrete dam, such as the Bureau
of Reclamation's mammoth Hoover Dam
on the Nevada/Arizona border, the reality is
that small dams and projects predominate.
Of the power dams that FERC regulates,
more than 70% have a nameplate capacity
below 5 MW.
And the scope of federal regulation of hydropower
is far less extensive than the hold
the government has on nuclear generation.
FERC only regulates about half of the nonfederal
U.S. dams that generate power. The
biggest, most visible dams tend to be those
owned and operated by the federal government,
including the Interior Department's
Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), the
Army Corps of Engineers, and the Tennessee
Valley Authority (TVA). Of the others,
FERC generally approves licenses for projects
that are on navigable waterways, are
on federal land, or use surplus water from
a federal dam.
According to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
(ORNL), licensed non-federal hydro
www.powermag.com
POWER | July 2011
projects today account for 57 GW of capacity
from 4,370 projects (see sidebar). Federal
hydro totals 41.9 GW from 746 projects. The
Army Corps has 432 hydropower generating
stations with 21.6 GW in capacity; Reclamation
has 198 projects with 15.1 GW in capacity;
TVA has 116 hydro worth 5.2 GW.
Although there has been plenty of public
attention on the putative nuclear renaissance
in recent years- " is it is or is it ain't " -few
think much about hydro these days. Yet water
over the dam and through the turbine is stag1.
Shared services. Hoover Dam, located
on the Colorado River at the border of
Arizona and Nevada, is one of more than 600
dams and reservoirs operated by the Bureau
of Reclamation, part of the U.S. Department
of the Interior. One of the original motives
for building the system of dams on the Colorado,
which flows through seven western
states and Mexico, was flood control. The 17
turbines in the Hoover Powerplant are rated
at about 2,200 MW. The plant's generation is
shared among Arizona, California, and Nevada.
Source: POWER
http://www.powermag.com
POWER July 2011

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