Status of Environmentally Enhanced Hydropower Turbines

• Published in: Fisheries (Bethesda) Vol. 39; no. 4; pp. 164 - 172
• Main Authors: Hogan, Timothy W, Cada, Glenn F, Amaral, Stephen V
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 01.04.2014
• Subjects: fish; survival rate; turbines; water power; water quality
• DOI: 10.1080/03632415.2014.897195
• ISSN: 1548-8446

Environmentally enhanced hydroelectric turbines have been developed to reduce injury and mortality of downstream-migrating fishes and to improve downstream water quality. Significant progress has been made in the past decade in the development of such turbines and in the methods to evaluate their biological and power generating performance. Full-scale demonstrations have verified the performance of Voith Hydro's minimum gap runner turbine, which maintains high survival rates for fish while producing more power than conventional designs. Despite a promising pilot study and subsequent design enhancements, similar full-scale demonstrations of the fish-friendly Alden turbine have yet to be conducted. Furthermore, the tools with which to predict and evaluate the performance of new turbine designs are available and are continually being improved. This article provides a status update of advances in this field over the past decade.