R&D to Improve Environmental Performance

In the United States, there are more than 90,000 dams and about 3% of those produce power, providing nearly 6% of the nation’s electricity. Almost half of this hydroelectric power is delivered by 165 federally owned facilities. Meanwhile, the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission issues permits to operate for non-federal hydropower projects. This permitting process is stakeholder driven and typically takes five to seven years to produce a license with terms that are in place for 30 to 50 years. The environmental impacts of hydropower facilities, biological and environmental study needs, and mitigation options for potential impacts are rigorously evaluated at the time of permitting. Common environmental concerns considered include potential impacts to animal and plant life and biodiversity, water quality and availability, hydrology, features of the land, watershed connectivity and fragmentation, and landscape and land cover. Once permitted, hydropower facilities may also monitor the safety of aquatic species and the environment to ensure reliable environmental performance and quality. 

The U.S. Department of Energy and its Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) are committed to improving the environmental performance and sustainability of energy-related activities. Most of the nation’s hydropower fleet is aging with many facilities built more than a 100 years ago, prior to the legal environmental protection framework in place today. This presents an opportunity to provide scientific information, tools, and technologies to improve environmental performance and to support low environmental-impact development. WPTO’s Hydropower Program places a large focus on improving understanding of fish movement and survival through hydropower facilities, advancing innovative fish passage technologies, and advancing monitoring technologies, relevant metrics, and other impact assessment tools.  

WPTO aims to provide information, data, and tools to the hydropower community that enable a better understanding of key environmental challenges, as well as technologies to monitor environmental performance and avoid, minimize, and mitigate environmental impacts through the following research priorities:

• Monitoring 
  • Develop fish tracking capabilities to provide more accurate and greater data for sensitive species over greater spatial and temporal scales. 
  • Conduct long-term field tests to demonstrate advances in fish tracking capabilities. 
  • Identify and develop tools for data automation and investigate methods to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning for processing and analysis for rapid and real-time environmental assessments. 
  • Demonstrate tools that utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning for environmental monitoring and quantify improvements in the data pipeline and cost reductions. 
  • Research and prototype tools and technologies for more accurate and representative water quality measurements.
  • Develop more robust models and methods to inform real-time operations for improved water quality.
• Mitigation
  • Design and test innovative up- and down-stream fish passage technologies to support fish communities and prevent invasive species movements and investigate methods for relating technology choices to fish restoration goals.
  • Quantify performance of innovative technologies and applied modeling capabilities to assess population-level impacts and restoration goals.
• Metrics
  • Provide information and science-based tools that utilize established environmental metrics and indicators. 
  • Demonstrate toolkits with hydropower stakeholders and assess capabilities to identify key environmental impacts and relevant mitigation methods.