Author(s): Abe Schneider; Sterling Watson

Linked Author(s): Abe Schneider

Keywords: Fishsafe; Hydropower; Turbine; Fish passage; Modernization

Abstract: Hydropower has a remarkable and ongoing legacy, having provided some of the first electrification nearly 150 years ago and today forming the foundation of the energy transition away from fossil fuels. In the last century, the global hydropower capacity surged, with early development focused in North America, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan, followed by massive growth in China and Brazil (IHA, 2018). These existing fleets are aging and in need of equipment modernization. At the same time, the adverse effects of hydropower infrastructure in rivers are reflected in significant declines in freshwater fish species abundance, estimated at an 81% reduction since 1970 (Deinet et al., 2024). These declines can be attributed to a variety of factors, including habitat loss and direct injury and mortality from turbine passage. Over half of the existing hydropower fleet in North America and Europe is more than 50 years old. Many hydropower plants are now simultaneously facing the need for modernization, while also encountering social pressure to improve sustainability of operations. Downstream fish passage has historically been one of the most challenging aspects of sustainable hydropower operations, given the difficulty in preventing entrainment and the often-hazardous conditions for fish in turbines not designed with fish safety as an engineering constraint. On rivers with hydropower present, the majority of river flows are passed through turbines, and in many cases fish must navigate through multiple projects to complete their river to ocean migration. To facilitate widespread adoption, fish protection technologies for downstream passage must be compatible with established hydropower infrastructure. Advanced blade shapes and computational turbine design techniques specifically focused on quantifying fish survival can enable “fishsafe” runner designs that operate at the same speeds and within the same water passageways as the end-of-life conventional runners that they replace. These modernized turbines can achieve hydraulic efficiencies as high as 95% while enabling turbine survival rates in excess of 95% for key migratory fish species and life stages.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64697/978-90-835589-7-4_41WC-P2108-cd

Year: 2025