Hydropower

Hydropower “can punch way higher than its weight” to aid global decarbonization

Hydropower “can punch way higher than its weight” to aid global decarbonization

The journey to decarbonize the global electric power system can get a large boost with a single step … aiding and supporting hydropower development and hydroelectric power as an enabler of intermittent renewables.

In a megasession this morning at HYDROVISION International — moderated by Dominique Gomez, deputy director of the Colorado Energy Office — three experts discussed the importance of hydropower and how it fits into and supports a larger global energy generation portfolio that is anticipated to have a heavy base of intermittent generation sources, such as solar and wind.

As Masood Ahmad led with, “Hydropower can punch way higher than its weight” in the global decarbonization journey. Ahmad is resource planning manager with the Platte River Power Authority, a wholesale power supplier to the cities of Estes Park, Fort Collins, Longmont and Loveland in Colorado. His responsibilities include planning for the implementation of Platte River’s Resource Diversification Policy, which calls for the supply of 100% noncarbon, financially sustainable, environmentally responsible and reliable electricity by 2030.

The three expert panelists James Barry, general counsel for Gravity Renewables Inc. and included Mucun Sun, power system research engineer in the energy systems group at Idaho National Laboratory. All three discussed their perspectives on the value of hydropower, Barry in his role leading commercial and power marketing contracting, corporate legal matters and the utility interconnection process with a company with 15 small hydroelectric projects in northeastern and eastern U.S. and Sun based on his research on deterministic/probabilistic renewable energy forecasting, power system optimization, and machine learning with applications to power system planning and scheduling.

With the amount of energy provided worldwide by coal expected to drop significantly over the next 25 years, along with natural gas, solar and wind are expected to step up and fill that gap, Ahmad said. However, the intermittent nature of these renewables is problematic. Sun reported on research work at INL on how hydropower can be hybridized through pairing with solar, wind and even batteries to smooth out dispatchable generation.

He shared data on the complementary of wind and hydropower, as well as solar PV and hydropower in the U.S. And he covered the complementary of future development at non-powered dams with wind and solar PV. Sun also discussed the known benefits of floating solar on hydropower reservoirs, including improving water quality. Another possible complement for hydropower he covered is storage, specifically batteries, which can enhance asset flexibility, enable various services and optimize financial performance.

Barry touched on the Inflation Reduction Act’s incentives for renewable energy, including hydropower, but how things could be taken further to improve the landscape for hydro. And the panelists touched on the significant potential for pumped storage hydropower, which they called 50-year assets. And while pumped storage provides some energy, the better value of this asset is in capacity and flexibility.

So what does the future hold? “If we don’t build more hydro, we’ll have to build more gas,” Ahmad said. But to achieve hydro’s potential, markets have to monetize its value.

Originally published in Hydro Review.