| North America
project’s social acceptability,” said Yannick Chevrier- Bédard, Manager of Construction Projects. Built by the Beauharnois Light, Heat and Power Company, Coteau-1 (built in 1933) and Coteau-3 (built in 1940) are two of four dams designed to regulate water levels in Lac Saint-François, and facilitate the flow to the Canal de Beauharnois and the headrace canal for Les Cèdres generating station. Spanning 320m, Coteau-1 dam has 20 openings with 18 gates, while Coteau-3 dam is 270m long and has 16 gates. The necessary rehabilitation work is part of a broad portfolio of major investments to modernise the Beauharnois–Les Cèdres complex and will be carried out in addition to the priority work that began in 2021 based on surveys of all the structures on the Fleuve Saint-Laurent (St. Lawrence River) and Canal de Beauharnois.
In May 2024, the Conseil des Innus d’Unamen Shipu and Hydro-Québec signed the Mishta Uashat Lac-Robertson Agreement following its approval by the Government of Québec. In a spirit of mutual respect and trust, the agreement aims to resolve all outstanding disputes related to the construction, operation and maintenance of the Lac-Robertson development which includes a 21MW hydropower station on the Rivière Ha! Ha!
Lac-Robertson generating station has been the subject of various legal challenges and claims from the community of Unamen Shipu. The new agreement formalises the intention of both the community and Hydro-Québec to forge a mutually beneficial, long-term relationship based on respect, cooperation and trust. Under this agreement, Hydro-Québec will pay a total of C$32million to the Conseil des Innus d’Unamen Shipu in the form of annual payments over a 23-year period. These funds will provide the community with revenues that it will allocate to priorities of its own choosing. “Building trust to foster partnerships between Hydro- Québec and Indigenous communities is important,” said Pierre Fitzgibbon, Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy. “This agreement helps create the conditions that will allow us to meet the challenges of the energy transition together.” “This agreement with Unamen Shipu is based on two fundamental principles of economic reconciliation. First, it’s a step towards acknowledging and settling past grievances. And second, it creates a source of revenues that the community can invest in its own priorities in the years to come,” Hydro-Québec’s President and CEO, Michael Sabia, acknowledged.
Lewis Ridge
Rye Development has been selected by US Department of Energy to receive US$81 million for Lewis Ridge Pumped Storage Project, under the DOE’s Clean Energy Demonstration Programme on Current and Former Mine Land. The Lewis Ridge Project will be one of the first pumped storage hydropower facilities constructed in the US in more than 30 years, and the first ever to be built on former mine land. As a closed- loop pumped storage facility, Lewis Ridge will leave existing waterways and wildlife undisturbed. “This project is not only a significant investment
in Kentucky; it’s an investment in strengthening our national electricity grid, helping to secure our energy future,” said Paul Jacob, CEO of Rye Development. “The Lewis Ridge Pumped Storage Project will protect
against blackouts and brownouts, while transforming a former mining site into a long-term economic engine for the region.”
Seeking collaboration Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is seeking a
hydropower utility to collaborate on a case study, funded by the DOE’s Water Power Technologies Office, to understand how small hydroelectric plants operating at 10MW or less can be upgraded to provide emergency power to critical loads (such as hospitals and emergency service providers) during outages. INL’s Hydro Hybrids team developed guidelines for modifying run-of-river power plants, which typically rely on power from the grid when the facility is starting up or otherwise not already generating electricity. The study would determine the necessary upgrades for a plant to restart and maintain emergency services in a blackout without any external power from the grid (referred to as “black start”). There is no cost-share commitment, but INL would
require the utility to provide plant specifications and data. INL staff will protect the data during the project, and anonymised data will be published in the case study to inform other hydropower owners. This effort builds on the successes of previous field demonstrations. In 2021, INL partnered with Idaho Falls Power, a municipally owned utility, to demonstrate how its five hydropower plants could be configured and modified to improve frequency response and maintain stability with larger loads during black start when paired with an ultracapacitor. INL also collaborated in 2023 with Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative to show how retrofitted and upgraded plant components and systems (hydro- governor controls and protection circuits) could allow the co-op’s hydropower plants to run independently from the grid to provide emergency power to critical loads. “The current call for collaborators is not intended to seek field test participants, but to gather specific data needed to design a minimal upgrade package that facilitates black starting small hydropower plants,” says Yemi Ojo, a clean energy postdoctoral research associate for INL.
Above: Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake River in the US is one of four dams slated for removal. US Senator for Idaho Jim Risch has recently voiced his opposition to this, saying that its cost would be staggering
References
Stark, Greg, Tessa Greco, Aaron Levine, Michael Ingram, and Stuart Cohen. 2024. Hydropower Investment and Public-Private Ecosystem Assessment. Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL/TP-5700-87470.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/ fy24osti/87470.pdf.
https://www.eia.gov/ todayinenergy/detail. php?id=61883
www.waterpowermagazine.com | June 2024 | 19
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45
