Showing posts with label hydro. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hydro. Show all posts

Monday, October 13, 2014

River’s Gonna Rise* - Hydro Power in New Hampshire – Part 3: PSNH Hydro Operations and River Flows

In my last few posts, Down by the Water  and Take Me to the River, I mentioned that my office looks onto the Merrimack River and the upstream Amoskeag hydroelectric operation that has been producing electricity for the past ninety years.  From this view, I often take note of river flows and whether the water is spilling over the top of the dam wall, as in the photograph below. In this post, I discuss the variability of river flows and how hydro plant electricity outputs are very dependent on these. I also look at the capacity factors of the Merrimack River hydro operations and compare them to national averages.


Weather and precipitation are the most important variables in hydro electricity operations because these determine river flow. I dug up some relevant information about Merrimack River flows near my office from the United States Geological Services (USGS). The chart below shows the river flows at the Goffs Falls monitoring point, which is just downstream of the Amoskeag Dam. The jagged blue line shows the data for 2013 and it is surprising how variable the flow is from day to day. The orange dots show the average flowrates over the past 76 years. This historical data shows that river flows generally rise during April to June due to snow melt, reaching flows that are four times the average value, and then drop off considerably during the dry August to October period, to about one quarter of the average. Interestingly, the summer of 2013 was a wet one, as indicated by the higher-than-average river flows during this period.

Source: USGS

A simple relationship dictates the generating capacity of a hydro operation:

Power = Constant x Flow x Height

In an operation such as Amoskeag, the height (or head) is essentially fixed because this is a constant-level run-of-river operation. However, since Merrimack River flows do vary, I took a look at the 2013 monthly river flows and compared them to monthly electricity production (measured in MWh) for the two larger operations on the Merrimack River. These are plotted in the figure below on the left, with river flows in the green bars, and Amoskeag and Garvin Falls electricity generation in blue and red, respectively.


Data Source: USGS and EIA

As expected, high river flows, particularly during the April snowmelt or the wet July of last year, generated higher amounts of electricity.  Low river flows, such as in the dry months of August to October, were associated with lower generation rates. 

The chart on the right plots energy generation against river flows for the Amoskeag plant. I was somewhat expecting a 1:1 linear relationship and was initially surprised to note how generation tended to start leveling off at high flowrates. However, the PSNH hydro folks pointed out that the maximum flowrate through the Amoskeag turbines is 5000 cubic feet per second (cu. ft/sec), so one would expect to see generation level off above this flowrate. Moreover, an average monthly flowrate of greater than 5000 cu. ft/sec does not necessarily mean that flow rates are higher than 5000 cu. ft/sec for 24 hours a day – there may be periods when it is substantially higher and then there are periods of lower flows.

In one of my recent posts, Down by the Water, we noted the simple mathematical relationship between energy and power:

 Energy = Power x time.

Applying this relationship to the Amoskeag operation, which has a nameplate capacity of 16 MW, and assuming 30 days per month and 24 hours per day of operation, the maximum monthly generation from the Amoskeag Dam can be calculated as

Energy = 16 MW x 30 days x 24 hr/day = 11,520 MWh

This is pretty close to the maximum monthly generation output on the chart above.

I was also surprised to note that the power generation of Garvin Falls was half that of Amoskeag although its generation capacity (12 MW) is 75% that of Amoskeag (16 MW). Calculating the total generation for both operations for 2013, I noted that Amoskeag produced 66% of its maximum electricity output (also termed its capacity factor), whereas Garvin Falls produced only 44%. It turns out that Garvin Falls is a more troublesome operation because it has a gatehouse and a narrow channel for a head race that is used to direct water into the power houses. River-borne debris, such as leaves, branches, trees, etc., build up behind the gatehouse and restrict flow to the channel, which significantly compromises the steady generation of electricity from this operation. Regular maintenance, involving the removal of debris from the screens where the water enters the power house, is required.

The Energy Information Agency, EIA, produces an average annual capacity factor for all hydro operations across the US. In 2013 it was 38.1%, which is much lower than I would have anticipated. I was expecting capacity factors for hydro operation to be of the order of 80% or so but the annual data from 2008 to 2013 shows US capacity factors ranging from 37.2% to 45.9%. The national data does indicate that the Garvin Falls and particularly the Amoskeag operation have capacity factors greater than the average US hydro operation.

There are several reasons for these lower-than-expected capacity factors for hydro operation:
  • Precipitation and river flows are variable and the maximum flow of water that the generators can handle is not always available.
  • River-borne debris and winter ice can at times significantly compromise water flows into the generating units.
  • The generating units need to be slowed or shutdown for periodic maintenance.
  • Even though hydro plants are generally the lowest cost producers of electricity when selling into the wholesale markets, they can be underbid by other generators, particularly heavily subsidized wind operations which will sometimes even pay to produce electricity. At times like these, there might not be any call for hydro power and the units are shutdown.

PSNH owns and operates several hydro operations in NH. Those listed below are owned and operated by Northeast Utilities, the parent corporation of PSNH.



Based on recent documentation submitted to the NH Public Utilities Commission, hydro operations will be responsible for about 11% of  the ~3,016,000 MWh of electricity that PSNH is planning to generate from its own facilities in 2014. These are PSNH’s lowest cost electricity generators and are thus an important asset to keep in operation and perhaps even consider expanding, even though the impacts of new or expanded hydro operations could be considerable and permitting could be extremely difficult. We have to recognize that there is a price to be paid for every energy source we use but, unlike fossil fuels where every ton of carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere intensifies the green-house effect, hydro plants will be still generating electricity one hundred years from now and will still not be pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

An important debate regarding these facilities is presently underway in NH (discussed in Should I Stay or Should I Go). In order to complete the electricity deregulation process in New Hampshire, it has been proposed that PSNH should be compelled to sell these hydro generating operations, along with their wood- and gas-fired operations and the large coal-burning plant on the Merrimack River in Bow. However, with electricity prices shooting up this winter and with PSNH customers, for the time being at least, somewhat shielded from these increases, this does give one pause for thought and to consider that ownership of generating operations may perhaps have some benefits. This is certainly a topic I will return to in a future post.

Until next time, remember to turn off the lights when you leave the room and, if it is raining, contemplate that the river’s gonna rise* and the hydroelectricity output will increase.

Mike Mooiman
Franklin Pierce University
mooimanm@franklinpierce.edu



(*River’s Gonna Rise – An instrumental tune by Patrick O’ Hearn, a LA bass player and electronic musician who has had a long and varied career, including stints playing bass in Frank Zappa’s band, the New Wave group, Missing Persons, as well as releasing over a dozen solo albums featuring electronic and ambient music. He is well known for his film scores and in the past few years has been playing bass in John Hiatt’s band. Here is the title track from Patrick O’ Hearn’s 1988 album River’s Gonna Rise.)

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Take Me to the River* - Hydro Power in New Hampshire – Part 2: Touring the PSNH Hydro Operations

In my last post, Down by the Water, I noted that my office looks onto the Merrimack River and the upstream Amoskeag dam and the hydroelectricity power plant that has been in operation for ninety years. In this post, I take a closer look at this power plant, which I had an opportunity to tour, as well as its sister upstream plants in Hooksett and at Garvin Falls. 

In the process of learning more about the operation of the Amoskeag Dam and the hydro plant, I was fortunate enough to be given a tour of the operations by the experienced hydro team at PSNH. The photographs below were taken during this tour. My tour of the facility was fascinating. I got a great view of the dam from the powerhouse side and was able to view the power plant from the inside.


The power plant is home to three 1920s vintage turbine and generator sets, which continue to work perfectly today and are so well designed and maintained that replacement is not warranted. As an engineer, I was very impressed to see these 90+-year old units still operating and generating electricity. The hydro industry is rather unique in the electricity generation business, in that many of the operations rely on old, well-designed equipment, which, in some cases, are 100 years old. This is a testament to past engineers who designed these units without the use of calculators, spreadsheets, or computer-aided design and drawing tools.


The Amoskeag Power Plant has a long history. The project was started by the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, the textile manufacturing company established on the banks of the Merrimack River and which led to the founding of Manchester. The Amoskeag Mill was at one time the largest cotton textile plant in the world. At its peak, the mill was powered by thirty water turbines, twelve steam engines, and five steam turbines.  In 1918, a decision was made to completely dam the Merrimack at the Amoskeag Falls and to install a hydroelectric generating station. This was placed into operation in 1924.

During my research I was excited to uncover the photograph below from the PSNH Shoebox website, which is a collection of old PSNH-related photographs. This  shows one of the turbines being readied for installation in the Amoskeag powerhouse in the 1920s. It is still in operation today.

Photo: PSNH Shoebox

After World War I, business became difficult for the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company because the US was in recession. Furthermore, the proliferation of electrical generating operations throughout the US, and especially down south, meant that cotton did not need to be transported north to be milled and woven. High costs, aging equipment, and labor unrest eventually led to the bankruptcy of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company and the sale of the hydro operations to PSNH in 1936.

The Amoskeag Dam spans the Merrimack River so that the river flow can be harnessed and fed through the three turbines at the Amoskeag Powerhouse (see photograph below). The average annual river flow is some 4000 cubic feet per second (cu. ft/sec) (equivalent to 1.8 million gallons per hour). At full power, the maximum combined water flow through the turbines is 5000 cu. ft/sec. This means during average river flows of 4000 cu. ft/sec, all the water, except for a 280 cu. ft/sec habitat bypass,  is directed through the turbines and there is no overflow over the top of the dam. My photographs of the water overtopping of the Amoskeag Dam were taken during the tour. Because the river flow that day was very low (~ 2000 cu. ft/sec), I was surprised to see overtopping. It turned out that the Amoskeag power house was down for maintenance because the transformers were being replaced so there was no river flow going through turbines and the full river flow, except for the bypass, was consequently all spilling over the top of the dam.

I was also fortunate to be taken down to the lower levels of the powerhouse, where I walked to the other side of the dam through a service tunnel inside the dam wall that runs along its entire length. On emerging on the other side, I got a closer look at the inflatable gate that is used to control the height of the water in the dam.


The Amoskeag dam is just one of three hydro plants operated by PSNH on a fairly short stretch of the Merrimack river, so I decided to take myself to the river* and drive upstream to visit the other two. About 7 miles above the Amoskeag dam, there is a small single turbine 1.6 MW hydro plant on the Hooksett dam;  a further 5 miles upstream is the much larger Garvin Falls Dam, which hosts four turbines in two powerhouses which have a combined capacity of 12.1 MW. The PSNH Merrimack coal-fired power plant, which uses the Merrimack River as a cooling water source, lies between these two dams. It is clear that, even today, the mighty Merrimack has an enormously important role to play in energy generation in New Hampshire. Below are some photographs from my upstream excursion.


Much of this post has been touristy in nature with descriptions of power plants, tours and lots of pictures but in the next post I will dig deeper into the technical information, such as river flows and electricity generation, associated with these hydro operations. My visits and research for these posts has given me a better understanding of the operation and importance of these hydroelectric facilities as well as a much better appreciation for the engineering design and construction skills of those old time engineers.

Until next time, remember to turn off the lights when you leave the room.

Mike Mooiman
Franklin Pierce University
mooimanm@franklinpierce.edu


(*Take Me to the River – The fabulous and heavily covered Al Green tune. The definitive cover is by the Talking Heads. Here it is from one the best concert movies ever made – “Stop Making Sense”. Turn up the volume and enjoy Take Me to River.)


Sunday, September 21, 2014

Down by the Water* - Hydro Power in New Hampshire – Part 1

My office is in Manchester, in Franklin Pierce University’s graduate school which is located in one of the renovated mill buildings located on the Merrimack River. From the conference room there is a great view of the river and the upstream Amoskeag dam. This is a 30-foot high, 710-foot long concrete dam that holds back the Merrimack River at this point so that the water can be directed through the turbines at the Amoskeag Power House located on the western bank of the Merrimack.  These turbines have a combined generating capacity of 16 MW. The photos below show my view of the dam wall and a Google Map satellite image for an overhead view. This dam was originally commissioned in 1924 to service the Manchester mills. While gazing at the river this week during a meeting, I decided it was time to turn my attention to the topic of hydro power in New Hampshire. This post is the first in a multi-part series on this topic.

Man has utilized the power of water (hydro power) for centuries. In the late 1700s and into the 1800s, advances in technology, powered by running water (and eventually by steam) is what lead to the industrial revolution. Throughout New England, textile mills were established along the main rivers, most notably the Blackstone River that runs down through Worchester, Massachusetts into Rhode Island and the Merrimack River that follows a route through New Hampshire into Massachusetts. The river flow turned water wheels and turbines which, through a system of gears, shafts, and belts, were used to drive machinery inside the mills.

In the 1880s, water-driven turbines were combined with electric generators to generate the first hydroelectricity, and in 1882 the world's first hydroelectric power plant started operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin. From that point on, the use of hydroelectricity grew phenomenally and, in 1940, hydro generated 40% of all electricity in the US. Since then, demand for electricity has increased ten-fold, but natural gas-, coal-, and nuclear-fired operations were established to fill the need. Hydro power output grew, but its share of electricity production has dropped off to about 6 to 8% of the electricity generated in the US today.

Hydro operations range in size from the very large 6809 MW Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state, the 2515 MW of the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant and the 2080 MW of the Hoover dam on the Colorado River to “hobby” projects less than 1 kW in capacity. (Remember there are 1000 kW in a MW.) There are about 1750 hydropower operations in the US: most of them are much smaller than in size than the very large Hoover Dam operation which we usually associate with hydropower.  In fact, most hydroelectric operations in the US are much smaller - almost 90%  are less than 30 MW in size.
Hoover Dam Hydroelectric Plan

All hydropower operations, whether private, municipal, or state-owned, are licensed by the Federal Energy Electricity Commission  (FERC) – the  federal “godfather” of the electricity business. There are 41 FERC-licensed hydro operations in NH, ranging in size from 136 MW to 58 kW.  Small projects, such as those less than 10 MW installed on an existing dam or those of less than 40 MW installed on a waterway used for another purpose (such as an irrigation canal), are exempt from FERC licensing. There are 43 such exempt facilities in NH, ranging from the 3.5 MW Gregg’s Falls operation on the Piscataquog River in Goffstown to a 5 kW operation on Marden Brook. FERC licenses often involve combinations of hydro operations run by a single operator on a stretch of water:  for example, the three PSNH operations on the Merrimack River are combined into one license. I also noted that the very large Moore and Commerford hydro plants on the Connecticut River are listed by FERC as Vermont operations. These licensing/classification artifacts can cause confusion, especially when data on generation, as provided by the Energy Information Agency (EIA) and used later in this post, is reviewed.

There are many different ways of classifying hydro operations. The first is by size. Large hydro plants in the US are generally considered to be those above 25 MW in capacity but international standards consider those above 10 MW to be large. Most of the hydro plants in New Hampshire are small operations: within this class there are subclasses which typically have the following size ranges:

·                                Mini                <1 MW
·                                Micro              <100 kW
·                                Pico                <10 kW
·                                Family             <1 kW

To give you a sense of what these capacities mean, it is important to remind ourselves of the difference between power and energy.  I discussed this topic in the I’ve Got the Power! blog a while ago. As a reminder, remember that electrical energy is the ability of an electric current to do work − such as producing motion, heat, or light. The units of electrical energy are kilowatt hours (kWh) or megawatt hours (MWh). There are 1000 kWh in one MWh. Electrical power, on the other hand, measured in kilowatts (kW) or megawatts (MW), is a capacity, i.e., the rate at which energy can be produced from a generator. Large generators, which can produce more energy per unit of time, naturally have larger capacity or power ratings.

The confusion between power and energy often stems from the similarity of the units: kilowatt hours or megawatt hours are energy units, and kilowatts or megawatts are power units. However, it is important to understand that even though the units seem similar, there is a world of difference between them. This difference stems from the simple mathematical relationship between energy and power;

Energy = Power x time.

I find it is always useful to understand these relationships from a homeowner’s point of view. Consider that an average US household uses 11,000 kWh per year of electricity (~900 kWh per month). If you had to generate that electricity yourself and you were going to do it over 24 hours a day for 365 days per year, you would need generator with a power rating of 1.3 kW.

The calculation would be done as follows:

Energy = Power x time
Power = Energy / time
Power = 11,000 kWh/(365 days x 24 hours/day) = 1.3 kW.

Of course, this calculation is based on a daily average, but our daily electricity use is actually rather “lumpy”:  there is a first peak in the morning as we turn on the lights, make coffee, heat up the house, and take hot showers, followed by a second and larger peak in the late afternoon/evening when we are making dinner, watching TV, doing the laundry, turning on the electric blanket, reading this blog, etc. If you were to actually buy a generator, you would want a unit that has a capacity of more than the average 1.3 kW so that it could handle the peaks in usage. This is why backup generators for homes often have sizes of the order of 5 kW to 15 kW. But I digress somewhat (I may come back to the topic of home generators in a future post)….

The second classification of hydro plants is by type of operation. The three main types are:

  • Reservoir or Pond-and-Release Operations: We most commonly associate these with hydropower and they involve large concrete dams holding back enormous reservoirs of water with the power plant at the base, as shown in the Hoover Dam picture above. The reservoir provides for a great deal of storage and steady power generation even during the dry season. These operations usually involve the upstream flooding of large tracts of land and significantly impact downstream water flows. The water level in the reservoir can also fluctuate greatly, depending on the incoming water flows and the discharges through the power station.
  • Run-of-River Operations: These hydroelectric plants depend on the natural drop in the river elevation. A portion of the upstream river flow is sometimes diverted through a large pipe (called a penstock) to a downstream generator plant, after which the water flow is reintroduced into the river (see the figure below). These operations often have dams at the upstream location to provide the water diversion point but their storage capacity, called pondage, is limited and, as such, these operations are more subject to the vagaries of seasonal precipitation and natural river flows. With limited storage, the reservoir level tends to remain fairly constant – excess river flow simply spills over the top of the dam. Electricity production can therefore vary substantially over time. Because these operations don’t involve large amounts of storage or flooding of large acreages of land, they tend to viewed as more environmentally friendly or “greener” than the larger reservoir operations.
  • Pumped Storage: These operations involve pumping water from a river uphill to a reservoir at a higher elevation during low electricity demand and low cost periods. When electricity demand increases and prices are high, these operations then run in reverse and the water in the reservoir is drained through a turbine back into the river, generating electricity in the process. There are a three of these operations in New England with a combined capacity of 1696 MW.


Source: IPCC

In NH, we do not have any pumped storage operations but we have reservoir and run-of-river operations.  Data from the EIA indicates that there are 92 hydro generators in NH with a combined name-plate capacity of 446 MW and a total winter capacity of 511 MW. The ten largest NH hydroelectric operations are listed below.  The Moore and Comerford dams, located on the Connecticut River which runs between New Hampshire and Vermont, are the largest hydro operations in all of New England. All operations listed are individual dams, except for the Great Lake Hydro-owned operation on the Androscoggin River in the Berlin area which is a series of different dams and 21 generating facilities. The largest PSNH-owned operation in NH (and the one that distracts me during meetings)  is the Amoskeag dam on the Merrimack River.


Source: EIA

As a wrap-up for this post, I thought a comparison with other New England states would be interesting. The table below lists total electricity production capacity (the power of the generator) and hydro capacity by state for 2012, as well as total production of electricity and hydroelectricity. The data include conventional hydro only and excludes pumped storage operations. We can see that Maine is the “hydro powerhouse” of the New England region, with the largest capacity, followed by NH. The upper New England states, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine  provide the bulk of the region’s hydro generation capacity.

I note with interest that, even though Maine total hydro capacity was only 17% of its total generating capacity, 26% of their electricity output for 2012 was generated from hydro. This means that their hydro plants worked very hard in 2012, which is indicated by the highest capacity factor for their combined hydro plants. (Recall from I’ve Got the Power! that capacity factor is the ratio, expressed as a percentage, of the actual electricity output from a generator over a year compared to the theoretical output if the unit operated 24 hours/day 365 days per year.) The comparative numbers for NH are quite different. In orange I have highlighted that hydro represented 10% of NH generating capacity but, in 2012, it was, surprisingly, only responsible for 7% of the NH total electricity output. The capacity factor of all NH’s hydro plants, in yellow, was therefore an extraordinary low 33%.


Source: EIA

This anomaly is quite striking and some follow-up research is warranted. It is clear that hydro power is intriguing topic and I plan to continue my explorations in future posts. Now, when I gaze out the windows at the Merrimack River and the upstream Amoskeag dam during faculty meetings, my colleagues can be assured that my distraction is not idle daydreaming; instead I will be thinking of river flows, generating plants, and capacity factors!

Until next time, remember to turn off the lights when you leave the room.

Mike Mooiman
Franklin Pierce University


(*Down by the Water – A great tune by one of my favorite indie groups, The Decemberists. These guys are great song writers and I always look forward to their new releases. Here they are from Austin City Limits – the best music show on TV. Enjoy Down by the Water.)


Monday, February 4, 2013

Renewable Energy in New Hampshire – Part 2

In my last post, we took a first look at the renewable energy portfolio for New Hampshire and we examined the pie chart below.



In this post, I am going to step back in time and see what progress we have made in the last 50 years. The figure below shows what we have achieved in terms of renewable energy.


 It is clear we have made progress on the renewables front. Since 1960 we have gone from 26 trillion BTU to 43 trillion BTU from renewable energy sources in 2009 – a 65% increase. However, for the last fifty years, hydroelectric and wood have been the largest components of the renewable energy supply. In fact, from 1960 to 2000 they were the only relevant components and most of the renewable energy increases were done on the back of increased wood burning. It was only in the 21st century,  with federal mandates for ethanol in gasoline, that ethanol began to feature. Technological advances and federal subsidies have helped spur advances in wind energy and it is now beginning to feature, albeit to a limited degree, in the NH's renewable energy equation. What is intriguing to me is that, in 1990, there seemed to be a significant surge in renewable energy, particularly from hydroelectric generation. A closer examination of data indicated that this was a one-year surge only and, in the years before and after 1990, the numbers were more in line with the longer term averages. The reasons for this one-year surge are most likely due a year of high rainfall which filled up dams and rivers, that, in turn, led to the generation of larger than usual amounts of hydroelectric energy. According to the National Climate Data Center, 1990 was indeed a high rainfall year in New Hampshire. In a future post on hydroelectric power in NH we will be taking a look at the correlation of rainfall and hydropower.




Except for the addition of ethanol into the renewables mix and a tiny bit of wind energy, it is my assessment that we have not made much progress, at least on the large statewide scale, in terms of renewable energy generation and, to be frank, considering our overall energy requirements, there is not a whole lot we can do.

For the moment, cheap natural gas has hammered at the viability of almost all other modes of generating electricity, including coal, nuclear and wood, but, interestingly, there has been the statewide growth of use of wood pellet-based heat for homes, schools and commercial operations where wood offers a competitive advantage over oil. The limited infiltration of natural gas supply into NH has made wood even more competitive in most communities.

Large-scale solar here in New Hampshire is unlikely to be competitive in the near term. More wind plants will make some difference: again this will be a relatively small fraction of our renewable energy. Permitting and local approval are challenging and I am not sure if we want to plant wind turbines on every available hill and ridge in NH. Hydroelectric power is a good energy source, especially here in the Northeast where water is plentiful, but frankly I do not believe there is the appetite for developing more large-scale hydroelectric operations. They inundate large swaths of land and, if wind farm opposition is anything to go by, establishing a hydro facility to drown thousands of acres of land is simply not going to happen.

What is more likely to happen is the continuation of the small-scale fuel switching from oil to wood and the slow roll-out of small-scale residential and commercial solar photovoltaic devices. Photovoltaic panels, while perhaps not the best investment (demand reduction is a better way to go), are becoming more affordable and downright fashionable.

This is a good place to circle back to the point I made two weeks ago. Yes, renewables are important, but what is more valuable is reducing the 65% of energy we waste. Our focus should be improving energy efficiency and reducing our energy demand. As we reduce our demand, we can ratchet back our need for fossil fuels and then renewables will, by default, become a more prominent proportion of our energy portfolio. If I were to be investing State dollars on energy programs in the State, I would be investing the large part of our time and money in demand reduction rather than in renewable energy sources. That is, at least, the opinion of this writer. Let me know what you think we should be doing?

Until next time, remember to turn off those lights when you leave the room.
 
Mike Mooiman
Franklin Pierce University
mooimanm@franklinpierce.edu
2/3/13