PNNL

The United States’ hydropower industry was primarily developed from the 1930’s to 1970’s, with many of the original hydropower turbines still in service.  Hydropower is critical to the United States electrical infrastructure and plays an important role is balancing variable input from other renewable energy sources. Damage associated with cavitation is a common wear mechanism that drives costly repairs and downtime.  An alternative repair process, cold spray metal coating, is being developed to repair cavitation damaged turbines to significantly extend hydropower turbine life and reduce downtime.