RIVER CONNECTIVITY SOLUTIONS LLC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: C54-18a

Description

The development of more hydropower energy is challenged by limited available sites, expensive development costs, low wholesale electricity prices and concern about adverse environmental impacts. Innovative technologies are required. Fish passage, especially, effective downstream passage of fish, as well as management of water quality, debris, and silt, is often one of the most contentious and expensive issues for developers of hydropower projects to address. This issue often requires several iterations of design modifications, multiple years or decades of testing and evaluation and detailed capital and operational budget estimating to meet resource agency requirements. This project describes a novel, modular system with integrated components, which can be used in the forebay of a structure to help manage water quality, fish passage, debris, flow, or silt guidance or exclusion. This system would be appropriate for installation at certain dams, powerplants, in river systems or industry facilities, as an option to installation and use of a costly Gated Selective Withdrawal Systems or other similar structure that would be built of steel and concrete or rock. These new systems can be built with a light environmental footprint, using high strength, light weight, lower cost hydrophobic materials that have the properties of strength and flexibility, which have modifiable buoyancy, and have an intended service life of fifty years of more. In Phase I, this project will bring together two leading engineering resources with a hydro solution developer who will provide the location for the demonstration of this technology can be used to guide or exclude fish and debris or moderate water quality. The research, design, and development of this innovative system and the benefits can be widely shared with industry, government, and other stakeholders. The development of these technologies and structures will provide stakeholders here in the United States and around the world a method to create clean, green energy, meet biological performance requirements, reduce their costs, improve their operations, provide public safety and physical security.