Get in, we're going on a dam tour

(The Colorado countryside surrounding Boulder.)

HYDROVISION attendees visit Boulder Canyon Hydro Plant, NREL’s Flatirons Campus, and USBR’s Technical Services Center

Our tour departs the Colorado Convention Center

It’s hardly 8 am and I’m jetlagged. My coffee tastes like burnt popcorn, and I’ve somehow selected a seat on the bus directly beneath the massive air conditioning unit. A colleague has given me an educational DVD to pass off to our driver- the idea is to play it for our tour group on the way to our first stop- but the player won’t recognize the disc. There have been smoother starts to a morning.

Whatever, tour bus DVD player. I don’t need any attitude from you today.

About three dozen HYDROVISION attendees and I roll out of the Colorado Convention Center, DVD be damned, embarking on a technical tour of renewable energy facilities near Denver. As I imagine to be the case for many adults, I don’t get to go on many field trips. I’m chaperoning this one, so hopefully we return with all the same humans we left with.

The unpleasantries of a bumpy morning quickly erode into the serene Colorado landscape. Unimaginably tall peaks cast shadows across seemingly endless pastures, outfitted by breathtaking rock formations. Our bus takes a turn down a narrow road into a canyon and we lose cell service, but I barely notice. The splendor of the internet is no comparison to the magnificence of Mother Nature, and I took pictures to prove it.

1st stop: Boulder Canyon Hydro

We come to a dead end, surrounded by massive poles and wires. Across a small bridge spanning the river we’ve been following lies a red brick building- the Boulder Canyon Hydroelectric facility. Originally constructed from 1908 to 1910 to serve the mining camps and settlements near the Continental Divide, Boulder Canyon is an engineering marvel, even by today’s standards.

Hydroelectric facilities supervisor Barry Hammond introduces the tour group to the Boulder Hydroelectric Generating Station.

Our guide, Barry Hammond, takes us inside the facility’s musty office. He tells us we’re free to explore, but not to press any buttons. He shows us some old photos and maps of the site and humbly brags that the original penstock from 1910 is still being used. In fact, the Boulder Hydroelectric Generating Station received a Historical Welded Structure Award commemorating the penstock, which has withstood 800-psi water pressure for more than 100 years of service. Oxyacetylene welding, a very new technology at the time, was used to seal its joints.

Hammond points out the gravity line on an old map of the facility.

In the 2010s, this facility underwent a modernization upgrade that involved retiring the old 10 MW GE turbine generator unit and installing a sleek new 900 RPM 5 MW generator. Boulder’s water usage has changed significantly since the original construction; a lot of water previously used for peaking power is now delivered to the city’s water treatment plant for municipal use. A feasibility study showed that a single 5 MW unit at Boulder Canyon Hydro would be adequate based on operational changes.

However, the facility has been offline for about four years due to a costly transformer repair. Nearly one million dollars and plenty of headaches later, Boulder Canyon could resume generation in November of this year. Boulder owns and operates eight hydroelectric power plants, with one purchased and seven constructed over the last 20 years.

Hammond takes us inside the old control room, which he says was decommissioned in 2011.

“Oh, so we can press buttons!”, exclaims someone in the tour group with impeccable comedic timing.

The control room could be something out of a James Bond movie. Incredibly, all of its bells and whistles- an entire room of wires, levers, and switches- now more or less live on a computer.

“I am a social scientist so my eyes already dazzle when I walk into somewhere like this,” marveled Ellie Andrews, checking out HYDROVISION from Colorado School of Mines. “Looking at the combination of a very high-tech thing that has persisted for 100 years but also- there’s handwriting showing it was last inspected in 1994- it’s low tech against high tech that I find very interesting.”

Let’s not snap any longstanding streaks today, eh?

Lynn Piraino, the director of strategic planning at the Bonneville Power Administration, has seen small hydro plants like this one throughout her travels across the Western United States. “What an innovation this was in 1910 when it was put into service,” she admired. “It was so innovative and they’re still innovating in hydro, making it better and more efficient all the time… There’s consistency and innovation at the same time.”

We hop back on the bus and head out to our next destination- a more modern glimpse at where renewable energy is headed.

2nd stop: NREL’s Flatirons Campus

The next stop on the tour has much tighter security. Getting onto the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Flatirons Campus feels more like entering a military base than a lab, in my experience. We debark the bus, show passports and identification at a check-in gate, reboard, and head down a lonely road leading to a massive playground for renewable energy science.

Massive wind turbines dot the landscape just outside the gates of NREL’s Flatirons campus.

“Our role is to create this real-world environment to reduce the risks associated with deploying more stuff,” succinctly explains research advisor Rob Hovsapian. He shows off NREL’s controllable grid interface and points out the campus’ six research pads with 1 MW batteries. If you want to test a device or replicate a particular scenario, this place can probably accommodate your wildest imagination. It feels like the Universal Studios of renewable energy research.

“Geeks and nerds, get excited!” he jokes. Hovsapian says NREL can emulate a 10,000-node system on site, roughly the complexity of the entire Western power grid.

NREL’s Rob Hovsapian addresses the HYDROVISION tour.

The sprawling campus has everything from massive wind turbines to a solar farm; from 2.5 MW of hydropower replication to a hydrogen electrolizer.

“It’s basically a big chemical energy storage battery,” suggests team lead Daniel Leighton as he explains NREL’s hydrogen capabilities and details its ongoing experiments. It’s also a great little shelter for rabbits.

I’ve been told cute little bunnies live under these structures, which also happen to be state-of-the-art hydrogen storage equipment.

“The equipment gets warm and they snuggle up to it in the winter,” smiles Leighton. “We’ve created a habitat for bunnies.”

And not just bunnies. Leighton says big herds of elk roam this time of year. It’s an open campus and studying wildlife interactions with renewable energy infrastructure is just part of the deal. So is the occasional 125 mph wind gust, all too common in the winter months. Almost every piece of equipment is tied down or supported with ballast for such occasions; there are days when the winds are simply too strong to work outdoors.

Leighton, Hovsapain, and their ilk (not elk) discuss the campus’ modeling capabilities and share how NREL is focused on leveraging multiple types of renewable energies within complex systems. That’s the name of the game, they say- making all of these generation and storage possibilities work together.

The Flatirons campus has three medium voltage grids; one feeds back to the utility (XCel Energy) and the other two are islanded for experiments, creating a safe haven for running all sorts of scenarios.

A 1 MW battery energy storage system on NREL’s Flatirons campus.

Before we head out, our group gets to check out a massive 5 MW dynamometer that NREL uses to validate any renewable energy system. There’s a wind turbine currently hooked up to it; the scale is staggering up close. This outbuilding was constructed in 2013 after the 2.5 MW facility next door ran out of space. The National Wind Technology Center’s (NWTC) custom-designed dynamometers can test wind turbine systems from 1 kilowatt (kW) to 5 megawatts (MW). The building houses a huge crane, and the dynamometer can create torque and apply pressure to simulate all sorts of conditions on a variety of equipment, including generators, gearboxes, power converters, bearings, brakes, lubrication, cooling, and control systems.

“I didn’t even know we had a facility like this in existence,” admitted Michael Fleurkins of Grant County PUD. “It makes sense now that I’m here and seeing this. To see this and the effort that’s being put into developing renewables for the future… To learn how they’re integrating is pretty fascinating.”

If he had the chance to play with any expensive toys, Fleurkins would choose the dynamometer. “Coming from a world of large, rotating machinery, this here is pretty fascinating to me,” he says.

Alas, our group must move onto other apparatuses in another location.

Last stop: The Bureau of Reclamation’s Technical Services Center

We arrive at our next (and final) destination, scarf down some sandwiches, flash our ID’s again, and head into a secured building.

The Bureau of Reclamation’s Technical Service Center (TSC) employs a team of nearly 600 scientists, engineers, and other staff and operates a world-class materials and hydraulic engineering laboratory. Today we’re taking a peek into a few ongoing efforts, starting with a massive hydro modeling workshop.

We check out a 1:18 physical model study of the Tolt Dam spillway, funded by Seattle Public Utilities. TSC provides technical assistance to federal agencies and works with state and private entities through cooperative and technology transfer agreements. The Tolt spillway model is one of many- another is constructed for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Next, we’re shuttled into the ecological research laboratory, where a team is studying invasive zebra and quagga mussels. Their presence at hydropower plants can lead to unplanned outages and impact public recreation, natural ecology, and water quality. Discovered in Lake Mead and other Colorado River reservoirs in 2007, the mussels have since spread all over the Western United States and beyond. The lab is working on ways to detect their presence, slow their spread, and ultimately rid them from our waterways.

The cross-polarized microscope filter reflects light off the mussel shell, giving it a distinct “X” pattern when viewed against a dark background.

Moments later, we’re whisked into a 70% humidity room that smells like dirt. It’s filled with soil samples used by Reclamation’s soil mechanics laboratory, part of the Geotechnical Laboratory and Field Support group, which characterizes materials through (you guessed it) laboratory and field testing.

Lots of very special stacks of dirt at the Bureau of Reclamation’s TSC.

The soil folks suss out the engineering properties of a given sample and conduct erosion and cyclic strength testing. The rock mechanics lab does direct shear testing in addition to rock strength and modulus testing. They’ve got lots of shiny tools to use in such endeavors, some of which are pictured below.

Next, our group visits the materials and corrosion laboratory, which offers expertise in corrosion control, housing extensive testing capabilities for assessing the interaction of a material with its service environment.

“Some of our facilities are 100 years old and we want to see them go another 100,” explains our guide.

He and his team conduct in-house testing of commercially available (and some up-and-coming) products, ensuring they meet ASTM International standards. The Hoover Dam, he reveals, still has a lot of its original coating; but as we learn more about the toxicity of certainty materials, service life for most coatings has decreased to the 20 to 35-year range.

A long-haired guy in mahogany pants named Trevor pulls us away to show us an enormous universal testing machine.

“Oh, we’re using this thing on Monday,” Trevor boasts. The machine can apply 5 million pounds of tension and compression.

Trevor stands in the shadow of a monstrous machine.

Trevor talks us through concrete composition science. He shows off samples comprised of different materials and explains why it’s important to have the right mix of the right stuff when you’re supporting huge hydroelectric dams.

We pop into the Bureau of Reclamation’s water treatment lab, where research is focused on developing treatment technologies, improving existing tech, and collecting data to inform the selection and design of water treatment applications. In this lab, the Bureau can simulate the entire drinking water treatment process and the water’s distribution.

We finish our tour upstairs with the electrical and mechanical engineering division. This crew provides expertise in mechanical piping, mechanical structures, electrical controls, power systems analysis and controls, hydropower diagnostics and SCADA, electrical equipment, and turbines/pumps. One guide describes the complicated, custom repairs necessary to keep the Bureau’s generation projects online. The other raves over a homebrew computer the Feds have cooked up for use in one of their facilities.