Optimization through innovation 

While the underlying mechanics of hydropower technologies haven’t changed, incremental improvements over the decades have improved hydropower performance for both energy and environmental concerns. For example, some new turbine designs and other fish passage technologies have fish survival rates at nearly 100 percent.

Pumped storage hydro systems also have an important role to play, as they account about 95 percent of utility-scale energy storage in the United States, according to a United States Department of Energy (DOE) hydropower market report. With smaller designs and footprints, they are cheaper and easier to build and adjust than conventional hydropower dams.  

Another option could be altering hydropower’s operating range to serve lower loads and higher peaks as a percentage of capacity. Upgrading plants with adjustable speed drives could better handle different kinds of demands, such as rapid response and managing variability.

But questions remain. What will the grid need? What can the hydropower fleet do? How can hydropower best align what it can do with what the grid will need? What new technology could expand what can hydropower do to meet grid needs?

DOE’s HydroWIRES team is focusing on these hard questions. Their aim is to help the hydropower industry navigate new waters with innovative and flexible approaches that optimize their own operations, as well as the national grid.

“It’s about performance objectives for our future energy system. What do we want to see in terms of the reliability, economic, and environmental performance of our grid?” said Rebecca O’Neil, a research analyst at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “Then we work with our partners to design technology and analytical solutions to achieve that future.”