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Chapter 8.
Ending burning of Natural Gas to make electricity.
 Natural Gas burning to make electricity usually happens in one of two ways:
1. An old small coal burning steam plant is converted to burn natural gas to make steam or is completely re-equipped with one or more new gas turbines.
2. Gas burning turbines, being quick responders, are added to a grid to "fill-in" for wind turbines also attached to the same grid.
 Nuclear Waste Burners, and Pumped Water Energy Storage.
 Nuclear Waste burning GE-H ARC-PRISM reactors, Pumped Water energy storage can end Natural Gas's dominance.

 Nuclear Waste Burning Overview Brochure   More   More                                                                            Pumped Water Energy Storage Brochure 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

PRISM Nuclear Waste Burning Reactor                                                                                             Pumped Water Energy Storage
 

Like the Russian BN-800, the General Electric-Hitachi PRISM reactor has the "right stuff" for converting existing coal burning power plants to nuclear power plants. 
It is 1/3 as powerful as the BN-800, an excellent size for America's hundreds of older, smaller coal burning power plants.

Introduction
Part 1    What's really going down on "Electricity Street"
Part 2    About the Natural Gas burning Combustion Turbine electricity generators that are used to fill in for wind turbines when the wind dies.
Part 3    Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines with modular nuclear, reassigning any un-decommissioned wind farms to pumped energy storage duty.
Part 4    Future Energy:  Nuclear and Water.  Pumped Energy Storage can make nuclear's electricity all it can be.
Part 5    Making Nuclear All It Can Be (despite nuclear's.  A Pumped Energy Storage System .pdf
Part 6    About Small Nuclear Waste Burning Power Plants.  The broken atoms (actinides) produced by 5 large conventional reactors will power two waste burners.
News Items

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Introduction.  Smaller than "Small Coal," this chapter is the largely rural "Mom & Pop" electricity generation chapter.

To a very large extent, most of the world's rural electricity is still from oil powered diesel generators.

 

 

 

 

 

 (Above) How CO2 clean are electricity sources?
(In grams of CO2 produced per kiloWatt-hour of electricity.)

 

 

 

 

This chapter takes us into the area of the smaller multiple sources of electricity that power most of the world on a 24/7 basis.

As you can see from the NEI chart (Above), all electricity generation sources come and go.  In 2009, the author had an opportunity to conduct an unofficial inventory of Michigan's electricity sources and was surprised by the results.  There were dozens of tiny hydros and diesels opportunistically supplying small amounts of electricity into local distribution grids on a part-time basis. 

This patchwork of small "come and go" "Mom and Pop" electricity sources provide a diversity that contributes substantially to the resilience of local electricity.

The challenge is to retain this resilience while making all electricity sources CO2-free.

(Above, right) A Small "Mom and Pop" peak electricity generation operation consisting of diesel generator modules on truck trailers, near Coldwater, Michigan.

Remember, electricity is a fungible commodity. 
No one seems to care where it came from as long as it is of sufficient quality and quantity.

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Natural gas burning turbines in the 25 to 300 MWe range have been what the United States has been installing recently to cover its growing electricity needs since coal burning went out of style.  Gas turbines produce 2/3 the CO2 for the same amount of electricity as coal, but produce far fewer of coal's other dangerous pollutants.  Since they are basically the same as jet airplanes engines, unlike coal and nuclear, they can go from no load to full load in a few seconds.  This makes gas turbines an excellent generation compliment to wind turbines to level out wind's moment-by-moment surges and lulls, at the cost of ending wind's claim as a non-CO2 causing source.  Unfortunately, gas turbines wear out much faster than coal power plants, adding high maintenance costs to high fuel costs and very high CO2 emissions as a consequence of the gas turbine's having to cope with wind's stop-and-go electricity.

 

PUTIN CALLS TALK OF WIND AND RENEWABLES “CLAPTRAP.”

In a world where utility companies and even whole nations feel compelled to mouth the litany that renewable energy sources are the future, Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is saying the emperor has no clothes.
 
Yesterday Putin called talk of running an economy on wind “claptrap” and said that nuclear is the only “real and powerful” alternative to running the world on fossil fuels. "You couldn’t transfer large electric power stations to wind energy, however much you wanted to,” said the prime minister. “In the next few decades, it will be impossible,"
 
Russia is putting its money where its mouth is. With 31 reactors producing 16 percent of their electricity, the Russians have instituted plans to expand to 50 reactors producing 25 percent of its electricity by 2030.
 
At the same time, Rosatom, the state-owned nuclear company, is helping develop civilian power programs in countries India, China, Iran and Venezuela and many of its former republics and Eastern European satellites. The U.S. and Russia are currently competing heavily on who will help develop an ambitious nuclear program in Vietnam.
 
Foremost among the Russians’ goals in developing nuclear is to reduce of the amount of natural gas used to generate electricity. With the world’s largest natural gas reserves, the Russians have nothing to worry about in terms of supplies. But they correctly perceive that electricity generation is a low-grade use for natural gas – really an outright waste – and are trying to conserve supplies for export. The Russians can get six times the price for natural gas in Europe as they do in burning it at home.
 
The U.S. is currently developing newly discovered shale gas, a strategy that Putin dismissed as “very difficult.”

Read more at Ria Novosti

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Part 1:  What's really going down on "Electricity Street"
 

What's really going down on "Electricity Street"
 Michigan's Generating Unit Types and their Energy Sources
 When we talk about new nuclear plants and wind farms we are overlooking the fact all countries have thousands of "Mom and Pop" electricity generators.

    Unofficial Inventory of Michigan's Generating Sources Connected to Utility Grids  (Nuclear not included)

Source Type

   Site MWe STeam I C Diesel Gas T HYdro Comb T CA Wind T Pumped Storage CS
Power MWe   36,343.5 23,689.9 867.1 4,236.8 352.3 3,169.3 2,000.0 1.8 1,978.8 23.0
                     
Generating Unit Count*   220.0 130.0 311.0 102.0 191.0 34.0 15.0 1.0 6.0 1.0
                     
Type Average MWe   165.2 182.2 2.8 41.5 1.8 93.2 133.3 1.8 329.8 23.0
                     
 US Extrapolated Count      6,600.0 3,900.0 9,330.0 3,060.0 5,730.0 1,020.0 450.0 30.0 180.0 30.0

*Several units at a single site is typical.                       Notice the large number of diesels (IC, @ 2.8) and hydros (HY, @ 1.8).  

DOE Unit Type Abbreviations:
CA = Combined Cycle Steam Plant; Often a new gas turbine's exhaust heating a new steam boiler for an old, small, steam turbine.
CC = Combined Cycle Total Unit (use only for plants/generators that are in planning stage, for which specific generator details cannot be provided);
CE = Compressed Air Energy Storage;
CS = Combined Cycle Single Shaft (combustion turbine and steam turbine share a single generator);
CT = Combined Cycle Combustion Turbine Part (type of coal must be reported as energy source for integrated coal);
FC = Fuel Cell;
GT = Combustion (Gas) Turbine (includes jet engine design);
HY = Hydraulic Turbine (includes turbines associated with delivery of water by pipeline);
IC  = Internal Combustion (diesel, piston) Engine;
NA = Unknown at this time (use only for plants/generators that are in planning stage, for which specific generator details cannot be provided.);
OT = Other;
PS = Hydraulic Turbine - Reversible (pumped storage);
PV = Photovoltaic;
ST = Steam Turbine, including nuclear, geothermal and solar steam (does not include combined cycle);
WT = Wind Turbine;

See also:  http://www.amazon.com/Power-Hungry-Myths-Energy-Future/dp/1586487892 

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Part 2: Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines.  About Natural Gas burning Combustion Turbine electricity generators.

About Natural Gas Burning Turbines
 The natural gas electricity people are also in the position of being able to eat wind's lunch.

The natural gas industry is advertising that their product is the path to a "Greener Future."  What they are not saying is that it's a lie, gas is 2/3 as CO2 dirty as coal, and that the gas infrastructure is not able to meet the demands of gas, rather than coal, electricity.

Two major reasons natural gas burning turbines are obsolete: 1. They make 2/3 as much CO2 as coal.  2. The natural gas they are burning is a national energy security resource that can be better used as feedstock for making twice as much synthetic oil as we are importing fossil oil from the Mideast.

(Below) 370 MWe natural gas turbine.

Combustion Turbines typically burn natural gas but sometimes burn oil or even finely powdered coal.

Natural Gas burning electricity generating turbines have become the major growth area for natural gas in the United States, providing much of the electricity capacity growth since the 1990s.  Wind farms need gas turbines to cover for lulls in wind, thereby, to some extent, putting the lie to the notion that wind is CO2-free.

 

 

Gas turbines consist of a jet airplane engine (right) with a speed reduction gearbox (center) to drive the slower electricity generator (left).  Natural gas usually costs 3 to 4 times as much as coal for the same amount of energy.  They can be entirely air cooled.

 

(Left.)  In addition to Gas Turbines, there are also thousands of small rural 2,000 hp (1.5 MWe) natural gas burning, diesel-powered, electricity power plants in rural towns and villages.  Like gas turbines, diesels can "Load Follow" wind turbines well.

 

 

 

COMBINED CYCLE: REPOWER COAL BOILERS with NATURAL GAS TURBINES   Add natural gas burning turbine generators. 

(Right)  Sometimes, when a large gas turbine is added to an existing coal burning plant, the coal boiler can be supplemented or replaced with a boiler heated by the jet engine's exhaust, (and sometimes a natural gas "Booster Burner") enabling more energy to be extracted from the burnt natural gas.  This combination is called "Combined Cycle" and is an excellent way to upgrade extremely old small coal burning power plants.  The big downside is drastically increased electricity cost.

This combined heat cycle squeezes more electricity out of the fuel.  The gas turbine's hot exhaust is then also used to heat the heat recovery steam generators to make steam for the original coal steam turbines. (Right, right)  Bottom Line: It is being done.  More electricity usually makes even more total CO2, coal toxins eliminated, going from coal to natural gas substantially increases fuel cost.

In situations where grid-attached wind power is also involved, a turbine's quick power response helps to keep the grid stable as the wind dies and surges.  Turbines are much quicker than coal or nuclear.  The old steam part would follow along as best it could.

http://www.energysolutionscenter.org/DistGen/Tutorial/CombTurbine.htm   Source: TechPro DTE Energy Bob Fegan 2002

 

How many gas turbines are there?

 

Everything here is fossil fuel.

Gas Turbine population in black.  By the mid-eighties steam, mostly coal, had stopped and gas combustion turbines were being phased in instead of nuclear, which had been paralyzed by the venom of the antinuclear environmentalists.

These turbines (black) will eventually have to be replaced with small (sub-300 MWe) nuclear reactors, preferably the PRISM nuclear waste burners.

As you can see, 300 MWe is about as large as single gas turbines units have become.  That's a pretty hefty unit by anyone's standards.

Diesels (Reciprocating) are the fine line at the bottom.  In the United States they rarely are larger than a few megaWatts.

 

 

 

 

The entire United States electricity generation unit population.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Part 3:  Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines. Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines.  Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines with a mix of Nuclear and Pumped Water energy storage. 

Replacing natural gas burning turbines with a mix of
Nuclear and Pumped Water energy storage.

50,000 Natural Gas Burning Electricity Turbines (most around 100 MWe or 135,000 hp in addition to coal burning power plants that have been converted to natural gas), make 10% of Global Warming's accumulating CO2 (1.6 billion tons of CO2/year or 32,000 tons CO2/yr/turbine).  Eventually they all will be replaced with similar power small nuclear electricity generating modules. 

There will be many different nuclear electricity generation module replacements:   GE-Hitachi  Hyperion   NuScale   mPower   PBMR   Toshiba 4S  

Like boilers, gas turbines wear out and most will eventually be replaced by modular nuclear electricity generating units like the new 125 MWe mPower nuclear electricity generation module made by Babcock & Wilcox or the 45 MWe NuScale.   Major gas turbine producers such as Siemens, General Electric, and Mitsubishi are certain to follow Babcock & Wilcox's lead into the SMR (Small Modular Reactor) market.  The world market is simply too large to ignore. 

GE-Hitachi already has the nuclear waste burning PRISM up before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The author is suggesting the best replacements for natural gas burning combustion turbines are small nuclear waste burning nuclear reactors and pumped energy storage. 

Pumped energy storage enables nuclear to make and store electricity whenever it is is available by enabling nuclear reactors to run at a constant power setting to smooth out fluctuating demand from electricity customers.  Smoothing both electricity sources and loads.  Making electricity all it can be.

 

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Part 4:  Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines. 

Pumped Energy Storage Compliments Nuclear's Baseload Power

  

By adding energy storage using hydro electricity, good things will happen:   Examples: Storage of Mega-City size amounts of electricity is being achieved at Ludington, Michigan, and in many hilly locations around the world.  California alone has seven.

The power of a pumped energy storage system (left - green, pumping, red, generating electricity) can pick up very quick loads.  (Diagram from Wikipedia) (Click on it.)

The equipment at right is part of a pumped water energy storage system that will hold enough electrical energy to keep Detroit going for about 8 hours.  85% efficient, this facility more than pays for itself by enabling the power company to buy cheap electricity from the grid at night and then to sell it back into the grid at costly times such as hot summer afternoons.  They also provide priceless quick emergency power when a grid feed breaker trips or a coal generating plant unit goes down unexpectedly with a blown boiler tube. Another important service pumped storage facilities provide is to help area nuclear power plants smooth out their loads.

The round machines in the ground are motor-generators with their shafts connected to water pump-turbines in Lake Michigan's water.  Electricity from the grid is used to pump water from Lake Michigan via 6 large tubes called penstocks to an artificial lake at the top of a high sand dune behind the camera.  When electricity is needed, the water is drained from the artificial lake - driving the pumps as turbines and their motors as generators - to return electricity to the grid.

Pump-generators can go from pumping water to generating electricity far quicker than either fossil fuel or nuclear power plants can go from idle to full power.  In theory, its quick mode-change ability and fast throttle response would balance out renewable electricity power system surges and drop-outs very nicely.  Unfortunately, there are very few wind turbines or solar electricity arrays in Michigan.

(Above, Right) Underground and underwater pump/generators at the 1,800 megaWatt Ludington, Michigan, pumped energy storage facility on Lake Michigan's east coast. -- Author's photo.    http://www.consumersenergy.com/content.aspx?id=1830 

(Left) Ludington Pumped Energy Storage during construction in the '70s.) -- Author's photo.

 

 

(Right) Google Earth View of Ludington Pumped Energy Storage.

 

 

 

Ludington can store and deliver enough electrical energy to keep Detroit going for about 8 hours.  
Batteries can hardly push a single car 100 miles on an 8 hour charge.

Remember, it takes about 1,000 volts to efficiently push large quantities of electricity 1 mile.  So the pumped energy storage site should be within 100 miles.

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Part 5:  Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines.  Making Nuclear Electricity All it Can Be.

Making nuclear electricity all it can be.

Pumped energy storage is great for nuclear

Nuclear fission is a natural process.  Natural reactors used to occur when mud puddles formed in rich uranium deposits.  17 such ancient natural reactors were found at Oklo, Gabon, Africa.  Nuclear energy isn't rocket science, but turning nuclear energy into electrical energy also has its transient behavior complications. 

I understand it normally takes about 3 hours for a nuclear reactor to make a 50% increase or decrease in power output.

Nuclear's "Awkward Moments."
 

Ever hear of Xenon-135 ? 

Me neither until I visited the Ludington pumped energy storage construction site (above) during the mid-70s.  Xenon135 is one of the major reasons it was built.  Iodine135  is a rather common fission product, reportedly amounting to up to 6% of the fission products.  Iodine135 subsequently decays into Xenon135, the most powerful neutron poison.  Neutron Poisons .pdf

"Xenon135 is an unstable isotope of xenon with a half-life about 9.2 hours.  Xenon135 is a fission product of uranium and is the most powerful known neutron-absorbing nuclear poison (2 to 3 million barns), with a significant effect on nuclear reactor operation." -  Wikipedia  

Xenon is a noble gas and will separate and bubble to the fuel's surface easily in a liquid reactor such as a molten salt or LFTR reactor but is embedded in the solid fuel rods of both slow and fast neutron reactors.  To solid fuel-pellet reactors, it's a powerful neutron poison.  The uranium fuel pellets become loaded with Xenon135 during normal reactor runs at higher power levels.  This leads to a constant, but completely predictable, operational difficulty that has to be factored in along with other load management considerations.

THE PROBLEM: With some Xenon135 in its system, a reactor's 'throttle' responses to increase power can become delayed.  Xenon135's presence in your neighborhood reactor may mean you can't increase power quickly after it has been running at high power until the Xenon135 that has built up in the reactor's core becomes weak through its normal 9 hour half-life decay time.  In this sense, nuclear might have "lull" periods where, for several hours of time, reactors cannot produce as much electricity as may be wanted.  One of the jobs of Ludington pumped water energy storage (above) is to reduce the power cycling of Michigan's several reactors and "cover" for a reactor the same way natural gas burning turbines are used to cover for a wind lull.

Pumped energy's speedy response to changing electrical demands is what makes it an extremely valuable asset.  Neither coal nor nuclear power plants are capable of changing their outputs as quickly as a natural gas burning fill-in or "peaking" turbine and only pumped storage is capable of 2-way energy flow.  Unlike a chemical storage battery, water does not need maintenance or wear out with frequent hard use and, unlike all other energy storage schemes, pumped energy storage can be economically built to be big enough to do the job.

When CO2-dirty electricity sources such as natural gas turbines and diesels are completely gone, we will need a larger pumped water energy storage component.

We need pumped energy storage far more than we need "Smart Electrical Grids."  Pumped energy storage everywhere is a smarter way to spend money than to build ever more complex smarter - and thus ever more fragile - grids.

Pumped electricity storage can make nuclear all it can be.

Coal2Nuclear ______________________________________________________________________   top

Part 6:  Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines.  About Small Nuclear Waste Burning Power Plants.

Ending Global Warming: Waste Not, Want Not

Nuclear Waste Burning Power Plants
 GE-Hitachi have come up with a reactor that runs on everyone else's 'Spent Nuclear Fuel' or SNF.

Its best to recycle nuclear waste.  One power pass only uses 5% of fresh nuclear fuel's energy.  Recycling yields 10 to 15 power passes.

We can quickly build sufficient nuclear waste-burning General Electric - Hitachi PRISM  311+311 MWe nuclear power plants to completely consume all the nuclear "waste" from all our nuclear power plants - past, present, and future - forever.

 

Big electrical power for big American cities.

General Electric - Hitachi PRISM Reactor. 
Notice they like the idea of in-ground reactors also.
(Image from GE-H Promotional Brochure,  More.)

Nuclear waste-burning?

The United States' population has been told spent nuclear fuel is a problem, we believe it, ignoring the fact the rest of the world has been recycling spent nuclear fuel down to nothingness for decades.  We have been involved in recycling nuclear warhead material into conventional power reactor fuel for over a decade   in the Megatons to Megawatts recycling program.  The ARC PRISM approach compliments nuclear recycling, is more advanced, and even more efficient.

Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing locations: France: COGEMA La Hague, 1,900 Tons/year, United Kingdom: B205 at Sellafield, 1,700 tons/year, United Kingdom: Thorp at Sellafield, 1,000 tons/year, Japan: Rokkasho, 900 tons/year, Russia: Mayak, 450 tons/year, India: Kalpakkam, 300 tons/year.  The United States, which had 3 reprocessing facilities, abandoned its recycling program in 1980.  Engineering on a new U.S. reprocessing facility to be built by Areva at the Savannah River site was begun in the fall of 2005.  Don't let Obama kill it.

Planet Earth has billions of tons of uranium and thorium.  Recycling will extend them by at least a factor of 10.  We really do have enough nuclear fuel to last forever. 

   Advanced Fuel-Cycle Technologies .pdf

 

PRISM Nuclear Waste Burner
In a nutshell.

Power Reactor Innovative Small Module (PRISM)

Power Reactor Innovative Small Module (PRISM)
Designer:  GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GE-H)
Reactor Power:  840 MWt
Electrical Output:  311 MWe
Outlet Conditions:  930°F
Coolant:  Liquid metal (sodium)
Fuel Design:  Metallic
Refueling:  12-24 months
Letter of Intent:  Updated March 19, 2009
Licensing Plan:  COL Prototype (long-term - Manufacturing License)
Expected Submittal:  Mid 2011
Design Information:  Underground containment on seismic isolators with a passive air cooling ultimate heat sink. Modular design with two reactor modules per power unit (turbine generator).
Status/Other Info:  NRC staff conducted pre-application review in early 1990s.
Website:  N/A

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Barns

One of the extraordinary sequences in the operation of a fission reaction is that of the production of iodine-135 as a fission product and its subsequent decay into xenon-135. Iodine-135 is a rather common fission product, reportedly amounting to up to 6% of the fission products. It has a rather small probability for absorbing a neutron, so it is not in itself a significant factor in the reaction rate control. But it has a half-life of about 6.7 hours and decays into xenon-135 (half-life 9.2 hours). The xenon-135 has a very large cross-section for neutron absorption, about 3 million barns under reactor conditions! This compares to 400-600 barns for the uranium fission event.

In the normal operation of a nuclear reactor, the presence of the xenon-135 is dealt with in the balancing of the reaction rate. Iodine-135 is produced, decays into xenon-135 which absorbs neutrons and is thereby "burned away" in the established balance of the operating conditions. There is an equilibrium concentration of both iodine-135 and xenon-135. But when the power level was drastically lowered at the Chernobyl reactor, the xenon-135 concentration began to increase because the parent iodine-135 was near full-power equilibrium concentration to produce it and the neutron flux necessary to "burn it away" was not present. It would eventually peak and decrease, but with a 9.2 hour half-life, that decrease would come too late!

When the persons conducting the tests on the Chernobyl reactor tried to increase the power at some point in their tests, it would not respond. They apparently did not have the understanding that the failure to increase was due to the absorption of neutrons by the xenon, so they completely removed the control rods to force the increase. The increased power then burned away the xenon and also caused voids in the cooling water, both of which rapidly increased the reaction rate, driving it out of control.

The "xenon poisoning" of the reaction rate had been known for many years, having been dealt with in the original plutonium production reactors at Hanford, Washington. In fact, it was dealt with in the original Manhattan Project where it presented itself as a dilemma - the researchers expected a given configuration to maintain a chain reaction and it failed to do so. They found that they had to increase the fuel concentration to overcome the xenon poisoning. So the phenomenon had been dealt with from the earliest days of our experience with nuclear fission, and should have been known by anyone who was in control of a nuclear reactor. - - Wikipedia

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News Items

 

Agencies Sign MOU Establishing "New Approach" to Hydropower, Hydroelectric, and Pumped Storage Facilities

Stoel Rives Energy Law Alert - March 29, 2010

On March 24, 2010, three federal agencies announced a Memorandum of Understanding for Hydropower (the “MOU”) that impacts developers of traditional hydropower, hydrokinetic, pumped storage, and small-scale hydropower facilities. The Department of Energy (the “DOE”), the Department of the Interior (the “DOI”), and the Department of the Army, through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the “USACE”) (collectively, the “Agencies”), signed the MOU to “meet the Nation’s needs for reliable, affordable, and environmentally sustainable hydropower by building a long-term working relationship, prioritizing similar goals, and aligning ongoing and future renewable energy development efforts” between the Agencies. The MOU comes at a time when industry representatives and eleven U.S. Senators are requesting that DOE support a $200 million appropriations request for the advancement of both conventional and advanced waterpower technologies.

In this “new approach to hydropower,” the Agencies intend to focus their collective efforts on advancing sustainable, low-impact, and small hydropower projects and promoting the goal of energy efficiency through water conservation or improved water management. Operating under the MOU, the Agencies will work together to advance four primary objectives:

• Support the maintenance and sustainable optimization of existing federal and non-federal hydropower projects;

• Elevate the goal of increased hydropower generation as a priority of each Agency to the extent permitted by their respective statutory authorities;

 

 

Collaboration

To achieve these objectives, the Agencies identified seven initial opportunities for collaboration in the MOU. Each collaborative effort includes particular initiatives and action items to be implemented by the Agency or Agencies “championing” the effort.

1. Federal Facility Energy Resource Assessment, led by the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (the “EERE”), the USACE, and the DOI’s Bureau of Reclamation (“Reclamation”). The Agencies will work together to assess unrealized generation capacity at existing USACE and Reclamation facilities. The Agencies will consider powering unpowered dams, installing capacity and efficiency retrofits and upgrades at existing facilities, improving water management practices, and adding pumped storage facilities. The Agencies will also assess the potential effects of climate change on federal hydropower facilities and generation.

2. Integrated Basin-Scale Opportunity Assessments, led by the EERE, Reclamation, and the USACE. In a “new basin-scale approach to hydropower,” the Agencies will collaborate with environmental groups, Indian tribes, hydropower facility owners, federal land management agencies, and other stakeholders to identify ecosystems or river basins where both renewable power generation and environmental sustainability may be increased. The basin-scale studies will both complement ongoing Agency initiatives and serve as a mechanism for assessing opportunities to retrofit existing dams consistent with the overall goals of increasing capacity and improving environmental conditions.

3. Green Hydropower Certification, led by the EERE. By collaborating with states, Indian tribes, nongovernmental organizations, private companies, and other federal agencies, the EERE will review potential criteria that could be used to identify and certify sustainable and environmentally friendly hydropower generation facilities, whether traditional hydropower, hydrokinetic, or pumped storage facilities. The EERE would also use these collaborative efforts to identify those technologies that could be included under state or national renewable portfolio standards.

4. Federal Inland Hydropower Working Group, led by the EERE and the DOI. Through this working group, the DOE, the USACE, the DOI, and other federal agencies will keep each other up to date on the regulation, management, or development of hydropower facilities in the nation’s rivers and streams.

5. Technology Development and Deployment, led by the EERE, the USACE, and Reclamation. This collaborative effort is intended to prevent the duplication of Agency efforts by sharing research and development (“R&D”) efforts and results. By sharing R&D information, the Agencies hope to (1) identify potential areas for collaboration and joint funding and (2) identify possible R&D deployment sites at or near USACE or Reclamation facilities for the DOE or jointly funded technology development projects.

6. Renewable Energy Integration and Energy Storage, led by the EERE and Reclamation. The Agencies see a critical role for hydropower in the integration of intermittent renewable energy technologies into the grid. To determine the scope of that role, the Agencies will (1) conduct feasibility studies to determine whether environmentally sustainable pumped storage sites can be developed at both powered and unpowered USACE and Reclamation facilities and (2) collaborate with industry stakeholders and other federal agencies to determine the amount and distribution of energy storage that will be needed to integrate those intermittent resources.

7. Regulatory Process, led by the EERE, the USACE, and Reclamation. Operating within their existing authority, the Agencies will identify and streamline the most time- and resource-intensive components of the federal permitting process for both federal and non-federal hydropower projects, where appropriate.

The MOU will remain in effect until March 24, 2015.

Potential Next Steps

The Agencies’ commitments to regulatory reform could be significant for non-federal hydroelectric projects licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. For example, the DOI could develop measures to streamline consultations under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, and Reclamation and the USACE could develop standard contractual language for allowing private development at federal dams. Actions like these could shorten the time necessary to develop new hydropower, hydrokinetic, or pumped storage projects. The National Hydropower Association (the “NHA”) made similar proposals to the Water and Power Subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee recently. In its testimony, the NHA highlighted several areas of opportunity specific to the USACE and Reclamation:

• Because the federal hydropower system constitutes approximately 50% of the nation’s capacity, Reclamation and the USACE have a major role in realizing growth in the industry;

• Reclamation should review internal obstacles to development at its non-powered dams, including cost-allocation issues;

• Reclamation should accelerate its program to increase the capacity and efficiency of existing hydro facilities; and

• Reclamation should consider its existing canal system for siting (1) new conduit power and (2) a national test facility for new technologies.

-- This is a publication of the Stoel Rives Hydroelectric Projects Law Group.

http://www.stoel.com