Scientist Envisions Small-Scale Hydropower

The Associated Press
October 18, 2004

A scientist says the United States could more than double its hydropower supply by harnessing the energy of smaller streams.

Doug Hall with the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory said the feat can be achieved using small turbines or generators instead of dams. Small-scale hydropower, he said, could help the country meet its energy needs while reducing pollution and the need to import fossil fuels.

"There is a huge untapped resource in the U.S.," Hall said. "Our project's mission is to lead and facilitate the next generation of hydropower, which will be small, distributed hydropower without the use of dams because of their environmental impacts."

The United States ranks fourth in the world in available undeveloped hydropower, according to the team's report.

Hall and his team have developed a map of all the streams in the nation that could be used for hydropower.

The project, sponsored by the Department of Energy, will include a catalogue of low-power hydropower technologies, calculations to determine how much installing one would cost and regional maps to evaluate whether a particular site would be good to develop.

There are several factors to consider, Hall said, including stream accessibility to roads, power lines and communities that would use the power.

Not including wild and scenic rivers and streams and those that run through wildlife areas or national or state parks, about 170,000 megawatts of power could be developed in the nation, the INEEL resource assessment found. That is more than twice what is developed now, according to the report.

In the United States, about 80,000 megawatts of power provide about 7 percent of the nation's energy demand, according to the Department of Energy. About 12,000 megawatts of that power is from "low-power hydropower," energy seized from streams that would produce less than 1 megawatt on average. One megawatt is enough power to run about 830 homes.

Large power companies are typically not interested in low-power sites because they want bigger bang for their buck, said Hall. But the investment could make sense for people who live in remote areas and want to provide their own power.

The biggest obstacle is cost, he said, because hydropower requires more of an upfront investment and then pays off in savings during its 50-plus-year life span. Hall said that could be mitigated by federal tax incentives.

In the 1980s, when such tax incentives were in place, installation of small hydropower plants boomed. But when the tax credits ended in the early 1990s, so did the development.

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