October 12, 2022
Sam Schipani
samantha.schipani@maine.edu
Photo courtesy of Sharon Klein.
Hydropower can move beyond enormous, Earth-altering infrastructure. Despite a growing trend of dam removals to preserve and restore ecology and indigenous ways of life, small hydropower projects have the potential to contribute more to a renewable energy future because they can be reliable, flexible and cost-effective, according to a review from the University of Maine.
Small hydropower projects are defined by the U.S. Department of Energy as any that produce less than 60 MW, though the exact classification of subclasses within the “small” range can be debatable. UMaine researchers Sharon Klein, associate professor at the School of Economics, and Emma Fox, Klein’s former graduate student, categorized the cost and performance metrics used to evaluate the different types of small hydropower projects and compared the results of these metrics across 13 different studies of small hydropower projects conducted in multiple countries across four continents.
“This literature review was an important first step in the research we conducted for the National Science Foundation-funded Future of Dams project. We were creating a benefit-cost model of small hydropower in New England and wanted to know what results other researchers had found. It turned out, no one had yet published a full review of the metrics we were seeking to calculate, and it was a lot of work to harmonize data from multiple studies to be comparable,” Klein says.
Klein and Fox pinpointed four major types of small hydropower design: reservoir-based dams, which block the flow of water downstream and release it through turbines; run-of-river, which can involve a dam but channels the water from the stream to the turbines in a way that ensures downstream flow equals upstream flow; pumped storage dams, which draw water from a lower reservoir to an uphill holding tank and release it through turbines to meet peak demand; and in-stream turbines, which are placed directly in the flow of water and require no diversion or impoundment of the river.
Each style has its advantages and disadvantages. Some styles of small hydropower projects, like the run-of-river and in-stream turbines, can be less disturbing to habitats and fish passage, but more conventional styles like reservoir-based dams are generally more reliable.
“There are so many different styles of small-scale hydropower dam and so little consistency in the literature on benefit-cost assessment for these generating assets,” Fox said. “It was difficult to find points of comparison.”
Still, the data showed promising general trends in small hydropower projects, like decreasing cost of energy and increasing benefits-cost ratio with increasing power capacity. However, the researchers also found a lack of consistency in the reported detail, assumptions, definitions and data inputs across the studies that makes it difficult to effectively compare them.
The researchers conclude that although small hydropower projects may still contribute to the renewable energy marketplace, scientists will need more publicly available, user-friendly cost estimation tools with site-specific input data in order to effectively implement them.
“Because small hydropower impacts are so site-specific, our study really highlights a need for more investigations of small hydropower costs and benefits — not only financial, but also cultural and ecological — in more locations that use consistent and comparable metrics, assumptions, and inputs,” Klein says.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation Research Infrastructure Improvement, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the U.S. Geological Survey.
The study will be published in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews in November 2022.
See the full article here.
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The University of Maine is a public land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the flagship university of the University of Maine System. The University of Maine is one of only a few land, sea and space grant institutions in the nation. It is classified among “R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity”.
With an enrollment of approximately 11,500 students, The University of Maine is the state’s largest college or university. The University of Maine’s athletic teams, nicknamed the Black Bears, are Maine’s only Division I athletics program. Maine’s men’s ice hockey team has won two national championships.
The University of Maine was founded in 1862 as a function of the Morrill Act, signed by President Abraham Lincoln. Established in 1865 as the Maine State College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, the college opened on September 21, 1868 and changed its name to the University of Maine in 1897.
By 1871, curricula had been organized in Agriculture, Engineering, and electives. The Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station was founded as a division of the university in 1887. Gradually the university developed the Colleges of Life Sciences and Agriculture (later to include the School of Forest Resources and the School of Human Development), Engineering and Science, and Arts and Sciences. In 1912 the Maine Cooperative Extension, which offers field educational programs for both adults and youths, was initiated. The School of Education was established in 1930 and received college status in 1958. The School of Business Administration was formed in 1958 and was granted college status in 1965. Women have been admitted into all curricula since 1872. The first master’s degree was conferred in 1881; the first doctor’s degree in 1960. Since 1923 there has been a separate graduate school.
Near the end of the 19th century, the university expanded its curriculum to place greater emphasis on liberal arts. As a result of this shift, faculty hired during the early 20th century included Caroline Colvin, chair of the history department and the nation’s first woman to head a major university department.
In 1906, The Senior Skull Honor Society was founded to “publicly recognize, formally reward, and continually promote outstanding leadership and scholarship, and exemplary citizenship within the University of Maine community.”
On April 16, 1925, 80 women met in Balentine Hall — faculty, alumnae, and undergraduate representatives — to plan a pledging of members to an inaugural honorary organization. This organization was called “The All Maine Women” because only those women closely connected with the University of Maine were elected as members. On April 22, 1925, the new members were inducted into the honor society.
When the University of Maine System was incorporated, in 1968, the school was renamed by the legislature over the objections of the faculty to the University of Maine at Orono. This was changed back to the University of Maine in 1986.
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