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The All Energy Forum at last week's ANS Meeting in Washington D.C. was an eye-opener for many reasons, not the least being my underestimation of the amount of new hydroelectric power that could be installed in America without building a single new dam.
Almost 90% of America's low-carbon energy sources come from hydropower (21%) and nuclear power (67%), which together avoid almost a billion tons of CO2 emissions each year. If we are to achieve any of the low-carbon goals we have set out for 2030 and beyond, hydropower must increase significantly and nuclear has to maintain it's share of power, and even increase slightly by 2030.
David Zayas, Senior Manager at the National Hydropower Association (NHA), says that the goal is to double hydropower over the next few decades, adding 60 GW by 2030, producing an additional 300 billion kWhs of electricity each year.
The premise is that most dams in America don't produce power, and that adding that capability would account for the increase.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @08:33PM
> More realistically, you'd have to drain the reservoir, divert water for years, and punch some holes in the dam (unless the dam is shorter than 10m from base,
Most of the dams are quite small and out in the middle of nowhere. One of the biggest logistical problems with this proposal is getting the transmission capacity to the dams so that the generated power can be sent somewhere useful.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday November 25 2015, @09:49PM
The dams are neither small nor "out in the middle of nowhere".
They are all up and down the Mississippi, Illinois, and Ohio rivers, and they are huge [army.mil].
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @10:01PM
There are 54,000 dams in the study. You are only talking about the 100 largest of them.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2015, @01:22AM
The press release says that "the top ten sites alone have the potential to provide approximately 3 GW of generating capacity, while the top 100 sites together could potentially provide 8 GW [...]". For comparison, the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station [wikipedia.org] has 8 reactors with a capacity of 7.3 GW.
About the cost of retrofitting, the report asserts that "adding power to the existing dam structure can often be achieved at lower cost [...] than development requiring new dam construction."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2015, @06:34AM
Thanks for quoting the report. What's your point? Or do you even have one?