GE wins hydropower research award

• 2 years ago (2022-08-16)
• David Flin

Hydropower 128 North America 1017

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GE Research has been awarded a 30-month $4.3 million project by the US Department of Energy’s Power Technologies Office to improve both the operating capacity and flexibility of hydropower assets.

A team of engineers from GE Research will work with GE Renewable Energy ’s Hydro business and with two hydropower plant operators, Eagle Creek Renewable Power and FirstLight Power . They will outfit three plants with sensors and other tools to enhance the existing operational flexibility by more effectively ramping electricity generation up or down with the hydropower assets.

Arvind Tiwari, Advanced Technology Platform Leader in the Electrical Systems group at GE Research and Principal Investigator on the project, said that a key objective of the demonstration is to show increased flexibility and operating capacity of hydropower plants without compromising the life of plant equipment. He said: “Hydropower today already is the most flexible and dispatchable renewable resource, but the growth of other variable renewables, such as wind and solar, will require it to become even more flexible and keep the grid in balance, especially as other traditional forms of base load generation come offline or retire.”