What's going on with hydropower?

In this episode, Jennifer Garson of the Department of Energy’s
Water Power Technologies Office discusses the state of hydropower
in the US and where the industry is headed.


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transcript)


Text transcript:


David Roberts


For decades, hydropower has been most common source of renewable
electricity in the world. (In the US, it was passed by wind a few
years ago.) Pumped hydro — large hydropower facilities in which
water is pumped up and run down hill to store energy — remains
the most common form of energy storage, both in the US and in the
world.


Even as the vast majority of media attention in the clean-energy
world goes to wind and solar power, hydropower continues churning
away in the background, generating and storing vast amounts of
renewable energy.


Hydro has a long and storied past, but does it have a future?
What's going on with hydropower these days? Is there any prospect
of building new dams or of finding more power in existing dams?
What's going on with small hydropower, on rivers, streams, and
reservoirs? And is ocean energy ever going to be a real thing?


I've taken hydropower for granted for a long time, so I decided
it was finally time to dig into these questions. To do so, I
contacted Jennifer Garson, head of the Department of Energy’s
Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO). The WPTO oversees a
sprawling network of prizes and grants meant to encourage hydro
and marine energy projects. I talked with Garson about the future
of large dams in the US, the promise of small-scale hydro for
local communities, and the uncertain future of marine energy.


Alright, with no further ado, Jennifer Garson, welcome to Volts.
Thank you so much for coming.


Jennifer Garson


Thank you so much for having me.


David Roberts


Alright, so we normally normally here on Volts, we do the sort of
deep dive into one thing. But this here we're going to attempt
something slightly different, which is a broad overview of a
fairly large category, larger than I think I appreciated before I
started digging around and just try to get a sort of global sense
of where it's at. Because I know that from my experience in clean
energy, I've sort of, like, had hydro in the back of my head as
kind of this steady presence, a little bit like nuclear, like a
steady presence in the background, but not something where
anything kind of dynamic or new is happening. And I think you
probably disagree with that.


So let's get into it. So just to start with, what are the
technologies encompassed by the terms "hydro" and "marine energy"
that your office covers? What is the remit?


Jennifer Garson


Yeah, so glad you asked that. And it is, sort of, just by nature
of our office as we're structured that, we have two very
interesting, but two very different types of water power
technologies. So the first that you mentioned is hydropower.
Hydropower really has been delivering power for the last 100 plus
years. It's both the conventional hydropower, so very large
behind the reservoir, big dams that people usually envision when
they're thinking about hydro. We also have smaller non-powered
dams that we power with hydropower. We also have run-of-river
systems that actually have diversions in addition to dams, where
you actually have water flowing to the side of the river. And
then we also are thinking about hydropower. Even in conduits and
canals, how do you use existing water infrastructure to provide
power, whether it's for water treatment or irrigation, a whole
number of different ways that you could use existing
infrastructure for water power.


Jennifer Garson


On the other side of the portfolio, we have marine renewable
energy. So while hydropower is probably the oldest form of
renewable power — although potentially, arguably wind is too —
marine renewable energy is the most nascent form of renewable
energy. And that's really looking out to the power of the ocean.
Everything from how do we kinetically capture power, how do we
use gradients to capture power. So everything from tidal power,
wave power, ocean thermal energy conversion, even salinity
gradients and even pressure gradients, really looking at a
multitude of ways of when you look out at the ocean and see all
the power that's contained in it, how do we use different power
capture systems to harness multitude of ways that the ocean
generates power?


David Roberts


Got it. So water on land and water at sea ...


Jennifer Garson


Water everywhere.


David Roberts


Water everywhere. So let's start then with big dams, because I
think this is when you say hydropower, this is what springs to
people's minds as sort of the conventional form. I think
conventional wisdom is that we've got a lot of big dams in the US
creating a lot of power and it's steady and it's good, but that's
more or less it. And so this is my first question. It's just do
you think we're going to build any more large dams in the US or
large, dam-wise, are we basically tapped out?


Jennifer Garson


So that's a really excellent question. I think there's a general
agreement that we are not going to be building. Any large dams on
existing waterways. I think in terms of large conventional
hydropower, we are most likely tapped out. Particularly here, I
should say, in the United States. That isn't necessarily true
elsewhere across the world.


David Roberts


Right.


Jennifer Garson


We do think about building other big structures like pump
storage, but those have been now leaning more towards what we
call closed-loop systems, which are two bodies of water
connected, but they're usually constructed and fabricated bodies
of water. They're not connected to an existing large river. So I
think for the United States, we're not going to see any large
behind the reservoir, conventional hydropower, big dams built on
any of our riverways anytime soon.


David Roberts


Also on the subject, I've heard conflicting things about the
carbon emissions of big dams. I feel like there's been some new
research lately that shows that those emissions are higher than
we thought. Because you're disrupting a bunch of soil, you're
creating a pool where things rot and produce methane. So what's
our latest state of thinking on the large dams that exist? Are
there large dams that exist that we think are less of a carbon
asset than we thought, that we think need to be closed down for
environmental reasons?


Jennifer Garson


So I think those are actually two separate questions, one is what
is the science behind say, methane or reservoir emissions,
particularly given vegetation? We are conducting studies right
now at the Department of Energy really trying to understand what
types of sensors and measurements are needed to either validate
or invalidate that as a theory. I think that there's still
unsettled research on the magnitude of the impact, also the
timing of the impact. So the other thing that we talk about when
thinking about reservoir emissions is, if you're talking about
vegetation rot at the bottom of a reservoir for a dam or a
facility that's been around for a long time, does it still hold
that you have emissions or methane challenges? And I think we
still need to do more research on both the kind of temporal
nature and the magnitude of the problem. It's not to say that we
think there's no problem at all or there's a major problem.


I really think it's a critical research question that we are
fundamentally trying to address with kind of true scientific
method. On the environmental piece, there's obviously been a lot
of both discussions and controversy about dam removal. And I
would say even ten years ago, it was not a conversation that the
hydropower industry was really actively engaged in or even
potentially willing to engage in.


Jennifer Garson


But over the last few years, there's been a really interesting
kind of convening between the environmental and the hydropower
community actually under ... it's called "The Uncommon Dialogue",
it was run by Stanford University that was really trying to get
together the environmental and hydropower community to have tough
conversations like dam removal, but also dam repair,
rehabilitation, and retrofits. And we actually just announced a
few weeks ago, through funding that we received under the
bipartisan infrastructure law, that DOE is actually going to fund
more participation in that uncommon dialogue stakeholder strategy
sessions, so that we can really understand where some of the
opportunities at both environmental benefits like flood
management, temperature control, but also the types of tools and
research that we need to understand, "What are some of the
environmental implications either of leaving power dams in
existence?"


Dam removal isn't necessarily something that we do within DOE,
but we do support this kind of ongoing dialogue between the
environmental and hydropower community, because ultimately the
future of hydropower needs to be one that is sustainable and
compatible with both from a climate perspective and from an
environmental perspective.


David Roberts


Right. Well, on the flip side of that, my other question is not
all large dams in the US are producing power, and the ones that
are powered aren't necessarily producing the maximum amount of
power they could produce. So how much sort of runway do we have
in powering existing dams or upgrading existing hydropower
facilities?


Jennifer Garson


Yeah, so there's kind of a couple of pieces in there. One is that
there are 90,000 dams in the United States, and only 3% actually
have power.


David Roberts


Oh, no kidding.


Jennifer Garson


Yeah.


David Roberts


Is it mainly small versus big is, like, the biggest ones have
power and a bunch of smaller ones don't? Or is that not the
dividing line?


Jennifer Garson


It really varies. It's not necessarily the big ones do, I mean,
you think about some big dams that do have power. I think
predominantly you're looking at small to medium-sized dams that
aren't currently powered, and many of them were built for other
reasons, like flood control, recreation, irrigation, you name it.
But still, it's always been incredible to me to kind of dig into
those numbers where you think that every dam must have hydro
associated with it, and it doesn't.


We've been doing a lot of research, looking at what are the
attributes of non-powered dams that we could potentially tap into
for power purposes; how do we take advantage of this existing
infrastructure and potentially provide power to it? And so, only
about the top 600 dams that we have have more than 1 megawatt of
potential, but they account for, actually 90% of the total
non-powered dam potential. The top hundred largest dams represent
about 8 gigawatts, and the top ten represent about 3 gigawatts.


Jennifer Garson


So there is quite a bit of power even within those non-powered
dams. And actually, from 2000 to 2020, there were actually 36
non-powered dams that were retrofitted that added about a half a
gigawatt of capacity. But then you also talk about, what do we
think about for the expansion of the existing hydropower fleet?


Jennifer Garson


We all know that hydropower right now accounts for about six and
a half percent of total load nationwide, but the capacity
expansion, even at looking at what do we do with the existing
hydropower fleet that we have, you could actually have a combined
growth of about 13 gigawatts of new hydropower generation
capacity through existing plants, adding power to non-powered
dams and some new stream reach. We had initial estimates of about
36 gigawatts potential for new pump storage hydro capacity, too.


David Roberts


So there are then potentially gigawatts of new power to be had
with dams that are already built?


Jennifer Garson


Yup.


David Roberts


And so why is it that already happening? Is it the economics?
What needs to happen to really ... because we need all the clean
power we can get, so it seems like this is something we should be
pursuing unless there's something stopping us. So what are the
barriers to making that happen?


Jennifer Garson


I mean, the answer is it's complicated because it's very
dependent upon the site that we're talking about. So it could be
that adding existing capacity requires additional capital and if
the capital gets too high is there a customer willing to pay for
that higher price of electricity? There's also complications,
especially for the existing fleet for relicensing. The
relicensing process for hydropower is incredibly difficult. It's
surmountable, but it is difficult.


It's actually more difficult. We did a study about a year ago
looking at the licensing and relicensing process for hydropower,
and the number of agencies even involved in hydropower licensing
actually exceeds that for nuclear.


David Roberts


Take that, nuclear-whiners.


Jennifer Garson


Exactly. Hydro has got it worse. But even with the challenges for
licensing and finding capital, we still think that there's
enormous promise by tapping into this existing generation fleet,
particularly given the firm flexible, baseload generation power
of renewables through hydropower, specifically. We even looked at
a study looking at what's the black start capabilities that
hydropower currently provides. Right now it's 40% of the black
start capabilities is actually provided by hydro.


David Roberts


Interesting.


Jennifer Garson


And whether you're talking about spinning reserves, ancillary
services, other grid services, I think we're going to need to
both expand what we have in our existing fleet, but also maintain
that existing fleet in order to provide the critical services
that we need as more renewables come online.


David Roberts


One of the big worries in nuclear is you've got these plants that
are up and running and they're scheduled to close, basically. And
so there's all this agita about we've got this clean power, we're
about to take it off grid. It's crazy. Are any of our big dams
scheduled to close or are they more or less like can run forever
as long as you maintain them?


Jennifer Garson


Again, it depends. Some are subject to licensing and relicensing.
Also half of the hydropower fleet is actually federal, so part of
it will stay online as long as the federal government wants to
maintain those dams. But the threat of licensing or the threat of
not being able to get through the relicensing process for our
existing fleet could leave up to about 50% of our fleet in the
next ten years is up for relicensing. We don't get that through
relicensing. That means we lose a substantial amount of our power
if they can't get through the regulatory process. And so we're
trying to focus on even things like how do we improve the
environmental performance of existing dams? How do you really
think creatively about some of the upgrades that could expand
some of those grid capabilities? Because if you're going to take
a facility that's been online and it's been load following, it's
really for keeping the lights on.


Jennifer Garson


How do you change the operational nature of those plants to also
provide those grid services without degrading the existing
hardware at those facilities? It's a totally new operating
environment, one that we can almost take advantage of the
relicensing process and do these types of upgrades, but it does
mean that we have to get that non federal fleet through the
relicensing process in order to keep them online.


David Roberts


This story of excess bureaucracy and paperwork slowing things
down pops up ...


Jennifer Garson


Everywhere!


David Roberts


Everyone I talk to.


Jennifer Garson


Yes, sadly, but I will say we've actually seen a lot of interest
on the Hill, on Capitol Hill, over the last probably two years,
I'd say through a bipartisan nature at thinking about some of the
challenges and opportunities in particular on hydropower
regulatory reform. Now we again at DOE really just take a sort of
analytical approach to understanding what that regulatory process
looks like and how it exists. But even last spring there was
actually a Hill committee meeting specifically on the regulatory
process. It was actually in a follow on a Hill committee staff
meeting that was specifically on hydro last January. So I think
there's both a recognition that something needs to change and I
think potentially some momentum behind trying to really take a
hard look at what the hydropower fleet has to go through from a
regulatory perspective.


David Roberts


Yeah, I guess it just strikes me it would be a little crazy for
us when we're in this mad scramble for clean power and we have
this infrastructure, a lot of which is already built, that we
could just get a lot more clean power out of that we're not going
for it, Gangbusters. final question about large dams, which is
one of the things you hear about the future of hydropower is the
threat of climate change itself and the threat of droughts and
the threat basically of hydro output, which has typically been
fairly reliable, becoming more sort of unpredictable and variable
and a little bit less reliable. Is that something you think about
a lot?


Jennifer Garson


So actually last year we conducted a really comprehensive look at
the effects of drought on hydropower generation in the United
States. So we did a couple of different analyses, but I'll touch
on this one first. Drought obviously can and has impacted
hydropower in the west, but if you actually look at it from a
fleet wide perspective, the Western hydropower fleet still
sustained 80% of its average generation during the worst drought
this century. Now, that was a lot of times reliant on what you
had as storage behind the reservoir and so we are doing a second
order analysis to say what happens when you have less reservoir
ability to really do an overall assessment. But there are so many
smaller subregions in the west that still they don't typically
always have drought super decentralized. It's usually
essentialized in certain areas. So it is certainly a threat and
we have a lot of work, I think, that we've been doing it. How do
we look at from a forecasting perspective, not just looking at
hind-cast models, don't use past as precedents, also look to the
future for future climactic modeling and how do we begin to plan
from both a climate resiliency perspective?


Jennifer Garson


What are the localized impacts going to be on individual sites?
But when you look at it from a fleetwide perspective thus far, we
actually haven't seen that much of a decline in power production
across the west. That's because sometimes where we have more
acute drought in some regions, we might have an abundance of
water in others. If you take a look at even California, whether
it's through the impact of atmospheric rivers or a historic snow
pack.


David Roberts


The snowpack they've got now historic highs. Is there going to be
an abundance of hydropower next year?


Jennifer Garson


It certainly could help make sure that there is a reliable amount
of water to help sustain hydropower production. There's a lot of
hydropower in California, but I think we still have more work to
be done on both what's the forecasting and looking at snowpack
melt and what it's going to mean for a next season's. Hydropower
availability and how do we plan not just on a year to year basis,
but over a longer period of time? So we're committing a lot of
resources towards this hydrologic and climate science analysis.
We also just did the most comprehensive assessment through Oak
Ridge National Laboratory, it's called. And this is because of
the Secure Water Act, the 9505 assessment, which really looked at
an analysis of hydropower generation affected by long term
climate change, specifically at the Power Marketing
Administration.


Jennifer Garson


And our most recent report, which we actually just published last
year, is that long term average runoff and hydropower generation
are actually projected to slightly increase across the
continental US, but some summer runoff is projected to decrease
by the mid 21st century. So you're talking about seasonal change
and so that will require us to think about storage in different
ways when we can rely on hydropower. Do you shift the kind of
seasonal expectation of it really fitting summer loads and
potentially more in spring or even winter loads? But maintaining
that flexibility and operation is going to be a key challenge,
whether it's because of projected seasonal availability or just
water management strategies or just the fact that when you look
at it from a purely sort of quantitative perspective, our ability
to know where water goes is not nearly as sophisticated right now
as where electricity goes.


Like, our sensors and measurements are so far behind that which
you see in the electricity sector that we feel like there's a lot
of opportunity to increase sensors, monitoring and models to be
incorporated into hydropower forecasting so that we have more
predictability and a better understanding of just how climate
change is going to impact hydropower availability. It's not to
say that it's going to be easy, it's just it's more complicated
than what you would imagine just looking at pictures of drought
in the west.


David Roberts


So let's talk about then smaller scale hydro on rivers, streams,
canals, conduits, smaller forms of river. I've heard about these
sort of in the background for many, many years. As far as I can
tell, it hasn't really amounted to much. And just like
intuitively, when I think about building like a little dam or a
little generator just for the amount of power that's coming
through a stream or a river, it sounds like a lot of
infrastructure for a small amount of power. So I wonder about the
economics. So maybe you just tell us what is the deal with small
scale hydro?


Is it a real thing? Is it growing or shrinking? Is there a lot of
potential there? What do we know about it?


Jennifer Garson


Sure, I want to just set a little bit of context.


Jennifer Garson


When we talk about small hydropower, we're talking about anything
between as small as 100 kilowatts, all the way up to 10
megawatts.


David Roberts


Got it.


Jennifer Garson


And, we do have this picture that large-scale hydropower is
really the predominant form of power. But actually, 72% of our
hydropower fleet — it's almost 1,700 plants out of the almost
2,300 total plants — produce less than 10 megawatts apiece. So
even though it may be more obvious that we think about hydropower
as large, it's actually almost 3.65 gigawatts of hydropower
capacity is actually small.


And I think that when you think about these small hydropower
facilities, a lot of times they're in places that it's serving a
local load or it's serving a direct facility. And so, to me, I
think the value of these smaller facilities is how they're
providing power to local customers. Many of them are owned even
by what you would consider more like mom and pop hydropower
operators. But also when we think about the potential for
non-powered dam development — so we talked a little bit earlier
about, "Are the big non-powered dams big or are they small?" —
71% of the potential for non-powered dam development is actually
in small dams with small reservoirs. So it may not be a simple
form of power capture, but there really is a lot of potential
untapped through non-powered dams.


And then you talked a little bit about run-of-river. The
run-of-river potential is also there. We have been talking to
different communities that are considering run-of-river systems
for power. And a lot of times soon we're thinking about some of
these small power dams. We get approached a lot by say,
communities in Alaska where they're looking at what are their
power potential in places where they're not going to be able to
harness solar on a year-long perspective or be able to
potentially get wind reliably. And so some of these small
hydropower facilities in more kind of remote and isolated areas
could provide really meaningful power to places that may not have
another form of renewable energy accessible to decarbonize their
systems. And to me, that's just as meaningful as adding big, huge
gigawatts everywhere.


Jennifer Garson


We need to add big, huge gigawatts everywhere of renewables. But
I think the potential for some of these smaller hydropower
facilities could be incredibly meaningful. We also even just did
an assessment last year, looking at underserved and distressed
communities in the Appalachia region, where could you power
non-power dams and add different forms of storage to provide
almost essentially quality-base load power. And there were quite
a few sites where you could provide reliable, relatively cheap
power for these communities.


Jennifer Garson


Now, when it comes to the economics, it is more expensive when
you look at it from a per megawatt basis. But when I think about
the critical value of having hydropower serve, essentially,
around the clock, I think this is where we think about
decarbonizing everything from the electricity sector. We're going
to have to have a higher willingness to pay for firm, flexible
power.


I think, when we're thinking about the economics of small scale
hydropower, we think about it in a couple of different ways. One
is, what is that power going to provide at that small scale? When
you're thinking about it as a firm baseload power, is it
providing power to places that might not have otherwise access to
renewable electricity or a clean grid? Is it in combination to
with, say, a solar array and storage? We've seen a couple of
small hydropower developers who are looking at it as almost like
a mini micro-grid with hydro as the small baseload power. And so
rather than it just being the project economics is just the
hydropower facility itself, thinking about it from a project
perspective: hydro with storage plus solar. And how do you think
about it within that overall kind of portfolio context and not
just the facility itself? That being said, funding these types of
projects is not easy, whether it's because of the licensing or
relicensing process or because of the high capital costs.


David Roberts


Is that a hassle for small run-of-river stuff too, the licensing
stuff?


Jennifer Garson


Sure, you still need a license to operate. There are some
exceptions, but you typically still need to get a license from
FERC. But they have been trying especially for non-power dams and
closed lip pump storage. FERC has been trying to have an
accelerated permitting for these types of facilities. So the new
stream reach, which is where there's no dam, that's a little bit
more complicated, but for powering non-powered dams, FERC and
other partners have recognized that there's already essentially
been disruption to the local ecosystem. So you're not talking
about a complete new build, you're talking about adding
infrastructure to existing infrastructure.


But it also depends on who the owner of the dam is. A lot of
developers are actually looking at powering non-powered dams that
are owned by the Army Corps or the Bureau of Reclamation, trying
to take advantage of existing infrastructure that's already been
built by the federal government and add power. And there are a
number of developers that are trying to think about developing
these non-power dams through a portfolio of different non-power
dams. So rather than treating it as a kind of one off project,
how do they do kind of feasibility analysis, looking at a number
of different non-power dams of power and treating it more like a
portfolio package of power.


And that is different from the way that we've traditionally
financed non-powered dams. I still think we have a way to go, and
we're actually about to set out on a study with the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory and Deloitte to really look at the
investment landscape in hydropower. Because ever since I've been
in this space, I've always heard that investment in hydropower is
really hard. But when you start asking the second order question
of why, you kind of get a jumbled answer of, "It's the licensing,
it's the customers, it's the PPA."


So we're really trying to put a lot of rigor behind, "How do we
get more momentum into developing non-powered dams? How do we try
to increase the investment appetite to looking at these types of
facilities and facility buildouts, whether it's expanding
existing capacity at hydropower facilities or small hydropower
through non-powered dams, to really fill that gap that we see
10-20 years down the line of the need for firm, flexible power
resources." So I think we're in the midst of a changing
investment landscape, too, about how do you value firm power?


David Roberts


Right. So it's fair to say then, when it comes to the smaller
hydro on rivers and such, it's not so much the raw sort of like
dollar per megawatt where you find the value. It's more in the
firmness, right, which we don't fully value yet, but will, I
think, soon. And the local benefits, local resilience and stuff
like that.


Jennifer Garson


Yeah. And even so, we just did a demonstration last year in Idaho
Falls, the Idaho Falls Power, and they were looking at how do
they optimize their smaller run of river hydropower systems and
tried to see whether or not adding some sort of storage medium.
Ultimately, it was super capacitors. But if they add a storage
medium to those smaller facilities, can they actually provide
black start capabilities for their local community, recognizing
that they're tied into a larger grid? And if the larger grid goes
down, they don't want to lose access to the electricity they need
for critical services.


Jennifer Garson


And so it's thinking about, too, in the context of some of these
smaller projects, can you use them to help jumpstart the grid or
provide more consistent power or provide a more predictable load
for electricity consumption? But I still think it is still higher
on a project economics of $70 a megawatt, roughly. But what we're
trying to really dig into is what is the value inherent between,
say, the $20 per megawatt you would see for solar and the 70 for
hydro? Are there enough services and economics behind that higher
threshold to really kind of catalyze investment into that space?


How do you provide that investment theory that shows why it's
really important that some power you're going to have to pay more
for?


David Roberts


There's probably a ton more to talk about there, but we have
other things to hit, one of which is storage. I think Volts
listeners are probably savvy enough at this point to know that
the vast, vast bulk of existing energy storage is in the form of
what's called pumped hydro storage, which is basically just you
pump water uphill when you have power, and then when you need
power, you run the water downhill through generators. Pretty
simple. This is how we do most of our energy storage today. So
one of the things that people say about pumped hydro is that it
is geography dependent.


You have to find the right body of water in the right place with
the right whatevers. So I'm curious, have we built out the sort
of traditional pumped hydro that is possible or is there more
room sort of same question about the large dams. Is there more
room to build new pumped hydro and is there more room to get more
capacity out of existing pumped hydro facilities? I know we have
this new technology that's closed-loop pump hydro, which we'll
talk about in a second. But just in terms of the traditional
kind, is that tapped out or is there more to be had there?


Jennifer Garson


Yeah, put it in order of magnitude. About 93% of the long
duration storage or even just storage capabilities. Right now on
the grid is pump storage. And that's actually just from 43 pump
storage plants.


David Roberts


They're very big.


Jennifer Garson


They're very big. They were actually originally built to
complement nuclear.


David Roberts


Interesting.


Jennifer Garson


Yeah. So now we're thinking about what's going to complement next
or continue to complement nuclear. But when you think about even
the potential in our existing fleet, between 2010 and 2019, we
added 1.3 gigawatts of PSH capacity just at the existing
facilities that we already have online.


David Roberts


Interesting. That's a lot.


Jennifer Garson


It's almost the same amount as all other energy storage types
combined that were added at that period of time. Yeah. So just
making these capacity upgrades is huge.


David Roberts


How do you add capacity? Is it bigger pipes, bigger pumps? Is
there any magic to that?


Jennifer Garson


Bigger pumps, different turbines, different upgrades to better
not impede flow, even management practices utilizing it more. So
even some of our storage facilities aren't necessarily utilized
to their full capacity. And so you usually either need better
control systems or kind of control strategies or equipment
upgrades or environmental upgrades. There's a multitude of
different upgrades that can happen to add capacity at our pump
storage facilities.


David Roberts


And that's ongoing. There's still more. There's more to be had
there.


Jennifer Garson


There definitely is more to be had. But I actually also want to
point out we have typically thought of pump storage as these big
open-loop systems. So you mentioned closed-loop. All of our
facilities right now are open-loop, which means they're connected
to existing waterways and rivers. So if you looked at where are
we going to have big diversions from big existing waterways to
other storage medium to other reservoirs, that's probably more
limited. But we actually just did a whole assessment on pump
storage resource characterization and resource assessment here in
the US and found there's actually 15,000 additional sites for
pump storage development.


David Roberts


Oh, good grief. And that's the open-loop kind you're talking
about.


Jennifer Garson


That's closed-loop, actually, specifically. Closed-loop, there
are more than 15,000 sites that you could actually have for
additional facilities to be brought online. And there are some
major closed-loop facilities that are getting pretty close in the
regulatory process, and we've actually been working with some of
those sites through our pump storage valuation project where we
were looking at what's the cost benefit analysis and return for
these different types of closed-loop systems.


David Roberts


Explain what a closed-loop system is just so people get it.


Jennifer Garson


It's basically very simple mechanical energy. You have an upper
reservoir, so basically an upper ground tank, for lack of a
better term. It could be at the top of a mountain, it could be at
the top of a hill, but you need some sort of head so it can run
down. But you have a top reservoir and a bottom reservoir and
basically pipes that connect between the two. And when you have
excess electricity, electricity pumps the water from the lower
reservoir up to the upper reservoir. And when you need that
power, you run that water right back through the turbines to go
back down to the lower reservoir. So it's just basically
mechanical movement of water between two bodies of water.


David Roberts


And so if you can create your own reservoirs, then all you really
need, geographically, is a hill.


Jennifer Garson


Correct.


David Roberts


And there are lots of hills.


Jennifer Garson


We got a lot of hills.


David Roberts


What about underground? I feel like I've seen this bandied about
where you just dig a hole and sort of use the surface of the
earth as your upper reservoir and the hole as your lower
reservoir. Is that a thing?


Jennifer Garson


Yeah. We've been working with a couple of different companies
that are looking at underground reservoirs. There are ideas,
everything from utilizing old mines, which there's some worry
about from a geotechnical perspective. Will you actually have
enough stability to have an upper reservoir and then the lower
reservoir in the mine? But there is potential. But then there are
companies like Quidnet who is essentially injecting water
underground and using it to come back up and spin through a
turbine for more modular underground pump storage. So I think
there's definitely opportunity both above and below the ground.
It just all really depends on sort of the geotechnical
feasibility, site availability and just what are you going to get
from round trip efficiency for different types of power?


David Roberts


Well, this closed-loop pump storage seems like a huge
opportunity. Do we know, I mean, if there isn't any built yet, do
we know what its economics are going to be relative to other
storage possibilities?


Jennifer Garson


Yes, we know the economics pretty well. I mean, obviously the
economics has changed as with every other storage technology out
there with the inflation reduction act passage. But we have done
a lot on sort of valuation from a per megawatt perspective. How
much would you pay for these newer closed-loop pump storage
facilities? The biggest challenge with anything pump
storage-related is the high capital cost at the beginning of a
project. And so where some of the project economics get a little
more complicated is: are you looking at a ten-year payback period
for storage or are you looking at it from ... some of these
assets can last 100 years.


Like what's the appetite when thinking about entering into a PPA
or building out a project? And there's also the complication —
and this is similar to other forms of storage: Are you generation
or are you transmission? Are you deferral or are you providing
that power? How does your power count essentially within a PPA?
The other challenge is too is oftentimes when we're looking at
some of these bigger closed-loop pump storage systems, you're
building them to complement renewables that haven't come online
yet. So how do you also enter into types of contracts?


You're like, "Hey, we want to build this facility because there's
going to be a ton of wind and solar." And if there isn't a ton of
wind and solar, it's like, well, we actually need that storage.
So you run into this chicken and egg scenario. What do you build
first? A big closed-loop pump storage facility that's going to
take seven to ten years to commission? Do you wait for the
intermittent renewables to come online to a point where you need
the storage? Or do you really start to look now at thinking about
what does your grid look like in ten years and take a more
long-term capital risk to build out some of these larger things?


David Roberts


Weird planning for the future. What a thought. When we think
about the potential, if there are 15, what did you say ... ?


Jennifer Garson


15,000.


David Roberts


... sites where closed-loop pumped hydro could work, then do we
know what sort of capacity that represents? I mean, that's a lot
of storage.


Jennifer Garson


It's a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of gigawatts. Now that's the site
feasibility. The practical feasibility of how much could we
actually develop is something that we're analyzing right now
because it was only just last year that we decided to kind of
reopen the book on, okay, let's not just thinking about it from
where we see site developers coming in and applying FERC permits,
FERC licenses, where others are really trying to determine where
the best sites are suited. Let's use an analytical perspective to
say, where, from a geographical perspective, could you feasibly
build closed-loop pump storage?


But we're working on a second order analysis to kind of scrub,
what does it look like from a total, not just technical
feasibility, but practical feasibility of how much pump storage
we could add? Because we don't want to say that it's going to be
thousands of gigawatts without really having some analysis behind
it. But we are really looking at this through both a hydrofuture
study and a pump storage study that we'll have going pretty soon
to look at that total, feasible storage that we can actually
capture through closed-loop pump storage.


David Roberts


Because you hear all these talks about long duration storage, all
this buzz, people are banding about all kinds of wacky
technologies and possibilities, but you just don't hear
pumped-hydro mentioned a lot in those discussions.


Jennifer Garson


I think ...


David Roberts


Need better PR.


Jennifer Garson


We do need better PR. We need better PR and all forms of water
power technologies — no offense to the technologies I care about
a whole lot. But no, you're right. A lot of times we're talking
about long-duration storage technologies that are still kind of
bench-scale prototypes. And it's things that I fundamentally
believe in. But I actually, before I was in the waterpower
office, spent a majority of my career in DOE on
commercialization, and I've seen how long it takes for products
to get from a lab prototype to bench scale to first of a pilot to
actual commercializable technologies.


And my concern is if we bank all of our long-duration storage
needs on technologies that are still at that pilot or commercial
demo scale, we may run into kind of a tipping point on the grid
where we really need what works now. But I do think that there
has been more momentum both here and abroad looking at pump
storage as a practical solution. And even Secretary Granholm has
expressed interest in pump storage. The Loan Guarantee office is
also looking at pump storage. So I do think they're slowly but
surely gaining more momentum at the potential feasibility for
pump storage.


We're even working now with the Tennessee Valley Authority
actually looking at pump storage. Duke is looking at pump
storage. I just talked to someone in Pennsylvania, in the
governor's office, that's also looking at pump storage. So I
think as people are looking at the practicalities of the grid, 10
to 15 years out, if we really are going to scale wind and solar,
we need to start planning for storage facilities now. And the
reality is that closed-loop pump storage can work. You do have
high capital costs. There are geotechnical concerns, but we know
that it works because it's a water battery.


You're pushing water up the hill to let it come back down. We
know how to do that.


David Roberts


Very simple.


Jennifer Garson


We've been doing that a long time.


David Roberts


Final question about water as storage, which is just, and this
might be kind of a naive or a silly question, but it just seems
like in the future, one of the things you're constantly hearing
about is water is going to become more scarce. Basically, there's
a lot of competing demands for water, and climate change is
messing up a lot of our sort of seasonal water provision and just
there's going to be water wars, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So I'm just wondering, is that something you worry about, using
water for this versus using water for other things? Do you think
water itself is going to become sort of contested and difficult
to get your hands on?


Jennifer Garson


I mean, I think clean potable water is a challenge that we are
definitely going to face as a country and as a world. I mean, as
a country, we're actually pretty privileged to have pretty
abundant freshwater resources. Now, whether or not those would be
clean enough to drink I think is a key outstanding question. But
in places like the Pacific Northwest and New England and even the
Midwest, water availability isn't necessarily the top concern.


Is it in the West? Yes. We actually wonder sometimes, or have
been analyzing the potential for almost water abundance in areas
where we don't want to have too much water because of flooding
concerns or extreme events. So there's the kind of flip side of
that, is it's not just about lack of water availability. Are we
also building out infrastructure that can withstand higher forces
of water, particularly through rivers and streams and waterways?
But if you're looking at things like closed-loop pump storage,
you're not going to have a ton of evaporative loss. So when you
have these storage facilities, you're not really competing for
fresh water availability.


You're just trying to keep the reservoirs filled. And that is
very different than trying to have the water needs for, say,
fossil fuel plants or even nuclear, which have pretty high
intensity water needs. But on fresh water availability, that's
something that on the marine side of our portfolio that we think
about as a potential for wave power to actually address, is the
delivery of potable water. Because I do worry a lot about our
ability to provide continuous fresh potable water for not just
here in the United States, but abroad.


David Roberts


Right. Well, you've set up my segue perfectly then. So let's talk
about the other side of your portfolio, which is energy in the
ocean and how to get it out of the ocean. This is another area
where I feel like it gives me like cellulosic biofuels vibes in
that there's like super exciting ten years out and then was like
super exciting ten years out 20 years ago and still super
exciting ten years out. Is there —


Jennifer Garson


It's like fusion! No.


David Roberts


Not that bad. Come on now. Not that bad. I'm wondering, is there
reason to think that any of these ocean technologies are any
closer than they were ten years ago? Is this a real thing? And
maybe just also, while you're at it, tell us, what are those
technologies? I know there's tidal. I know there's something with
buoys going up and down. There are probably others. What are we
talking about in the ocean? And is it real? Is it really going to
happen?


Jennifer Garson


I think I wouldn't be directing a program for marine renewable
energy. If I didn't think it was real, I'd probably try to find
myself another job. No, the second question you actually asked is
what are we talking about in terms of marine energy? And so the
biggest sort of marine energy capture that we concentrate on are
waves, tides, and then river and ocean currents. So the big buoys
that falls into sort of the wave category, you can have
everything from bottom mounted flaps that are trying to capture
wave power to surface riding systems to systems that are within
the water column.


So the complication with waves, there really hasn't been a kind
of convergence on the right structure or even where in the water
column is most optimal for a power capture system. But I would
say unlike even ten years ago where wave energy, you had a couple
of projects that were out in Europe, we now are seeing an
increasing number of in water deployments of wave energy systems,
and it's working. So I would say here in the United States, we
just had the longest wave energy demonstration project off of the
Scripps Pier in California with Calwave, where they were
producing electricity using the power of waves. And they even
were able to sustain through a pretty powerful storm surge
because that's always really complicated matter for waves, is
being able to withstand a range of different forces.


David Roberts


Right. Well, this is what comes to mind. Intuitively, out in the
ocean is just a brutal place. You got the wind and the tides and
the storms, but also just saltwater corrosion and I don't know,
fish. There's so many things to deal with. Are they being dealt
with?


Jennifer Garson


I think this isn't the first time we've dealt with infrastructure
in the ocean either.


David Roberts


Right.


Jennifer Garson


It's hard, but it's not insurmountable. We're talking about
materials for corrosion. We're doing research and even looking at
can you use different methods to reduce corrosion impacts?
Everything from coatings and materials to even the use of lasers
for different etchings into materials to reduce corrosion?
Biofouling is an issue. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that grows
on infrastructure that's in the ocean, but we're trying to work
on a multitude of ways for us to address or even potentially
embrace biofouling from an environmental perspective. We do a lot
in environmental monitoring around these devices. We put a
substantial amount of funding on trying to understand the
interaction of mammals, fish species, both from an acoustics
perspective to any sort of entanglement perspective.


And thus far, with our in water deployments, we're actually
seeing compatibility instead of conflict. From an environmental
perspective, that's because we're trying to design these systems
with the environment in mind. But it is a hard environment. But
the thing is, waves, tides, they're more predictable than other
forms of electricity. So if we're really trying to hit our 100%
decarbonization goals in 2050 or beyond, we're going to need
solutions like marine energy in order to actually hit those
targets.


David Roberts


Tides come in every day.


Jennifer Garson


Tides come in every day. And actually on the West Coast, waves
are predictable because you're talking about predicting waves
that are coming basically from Asia. We have waves. I'm serious.
It's why actually wave energy is almost easier on the west coast
of Europe as it is sort of the West Coast or here for the United
States because we have pretty complex models that actually can
give us forecast for what our wave conditions are going to be
like. So it gives us some good sense of predictability. Tides
definitely 100% predictable. Unless the moon changes, which who
knows?


David Roberts


Who knows? What does tidal energy look like? What do those
machines look like?


Jennifer Garson


So there are a couple of different types of device designs right
now in tidal energy. You're seeing more of a convergence on what
tidal energy systems might or could look like, particularly
looking both in the US and out in the EU. Some of them, like
Verdant Power, which we supported a demonstration in New York,
would look familiar to any of your listeners. It looks almost
like tiny wind turbines on a triblade that goes underneath the
water. So it's using the same kind of findings from wind of
running a turbine, generating electricity, providing it to shore.
There are other systems that are surface riding.


So there are some European companies and Canadian companies that
essentially have the operations and maintenance basically on the
surface and then have turbines that go and submerge underneath
the water, but they're still running either two or three blade
turbines to capture power. So it's taking a lot of the lessons
that were already learned in the wind industry and applying it
for tidal power. And tidal power, I mean, we believe it a lot for
here in the United States. Is it the largest resource to capture?
No, that's wave. But there's a lot of tidal energy in New
England, in the Pacific Northwest, and in particular in Alaska,
where the potential resource is pretty massive.


So actually we are in the next coming weeks, we have a notice of
intent out already on this, but we're going to be funding a $45
million solicitation focused on tidal energy here in the United
States. So both a commercial site with about $35 million and also
for remote and islanded communities, and isolated communities
another 10 million. So I think the the maturity of the tidal
industry is definitely more mature right now than wave, but I
think wave is starting to catch up. But if you look over at
Europe again, they've had gigawatt hours of power provided by
tidal energy at some of these sites that have already been
delivered to the grid.


So it may not always be as visible. Maybe it's because it's
underneath the ocean or just on top of the ocean, but there's a
lot of technological progress that we see in tidal and I see in
the very near term for wave.


David Roberts


And this is in financial terms the same challenge basically
you're facing with all these other technologies we're talking
about, which is high upfront capital costs and then that pay off
over a very long period of time, which is just always a
difficulty when you're talking about financing.


Jennifer Garson


It is. And one of the challenges, too, for marine energy, and
it's similar, I would say, to newer geothermal energy or
long-duration storage, is in order to prove that it works, you
have to be willing to fund some pretty serious demonstrations.
And that takes a lot of capital that oftentimes, say, venture or
even philanthropic capital isn't necessarily willing to take a
risk on. Because to prove that the marine energy works, you have
to get it in the ocean. And putting things in the ocean is a
non-insubstantial cost. And so we're really trying to think about
how do we demonstrate these systems take a lot of the risk and
ownership on the US federal government in a way that we think
will ultimately pay off. But that willingness to pay for demos or
demonstrations of arrays is still going to be pretty high until
you get to economies at scale.


And so we either have to bet big, which I really hope we do here
in the US, or we leave potentially this enormous 57% of all US
power generation potential in the US stranded because you don't
have that willingness to pay for these really expensive demos.
But those demos are the only way we learn.


David Roberts


Didn't we just pass a bunch of legislation that is basically fire
hosing money at all these things? Is some of that money going to
do what you're just talking about going to kind of kickstart
marine and tidal?


Jennifer Garson


So in the bipartisan infrastructure law, we did receive about
$110 billion for marine renewable energy, $40 of that is for our
national marine energy centers and the other $70.4 was actually
for marine energy. But if you look at that in comparison to say,
the funding that we're putting into direct air capture or
hydrogen, it's nowhere near the level of investment that we've
received from the federal government. And it's not just ... for
us, I think we've seen the same thing for sustainable aviation
fuel demonstrations or geothermal demonstrations, like, I think
there are still a number of technologies that's going to take a
lot of capital in order to really demonstrate the feasibility and
get to economies at scale that weren't necessarily funded with
the enormous lug of funding that we got now. There's a lot of
money going around, and it's very exciting for me as someone
who's been at DOE for 13 years, but it's not going to be
sufficient, I think, for really driving down the cost of the
whole portfolio of solutions that we're going to need to
decarbonize everything by 2050.


David Roberts


Well, and the loan office plays some role there and there's
supposedly going to be a green bank did that end up making it in?
I forget what ... I think the Green Bank made it in. So maybe
there'll be some ongoing sources for some of this funding.


Jennifer Garson


Totally agree. And we work with our Loan Guarantee Office
partners to understand what are those pathways into kind of
commercial viability that. And we are also working with the
Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations to understand what's the
role of the Water Power Office at Derisking. Some of these pilot
technologies moving into an office like the demonstration office
and eventually being well primed for the Loan Guarantee Program
office, because LPO really wants to see that these technologies
have been successful at a pre-commercial scale. But even that gap
between pilot and pre-commercial scale for some of these energy
systems is more complex than just one off projects.


But we're thinking about it critically at having kind of an all
of DOE approach to derisking and investing in these technologies
and ultimately helping them scale.


David Roberts


The one marine technology we didn't mention is ocean thermal
something something.


Jennifer Garson


OTEC is the acronym. It's Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.


Jennifer Garson


Yes.


David Roberts


Right. I feel like I've been hearing that about that also for
years and years and years and it never seems to amount to much.
Is that going to, well, first of all, tell listeners what the
heck we're talking about, but is that going to be a thing?


Jennifer Garson


So OTEC, for anybody who isn't as familiar with all forms of
marine energy, is basically using the thermal differentiation
between the warmer surface water and the deep sea cool water to,
essentially, use that to harness power, without getting into more
technical details.


OTEC is also really hard. The round-trip efficiencies that we've
seen for OTEC have been not awesome, but there are a number of
sites that are looking at both. How do we potentially use
seawater air cooling, so more like ambient temperatures instead
of for power generation. There are some OTEC facilities too,
particularly in the Pacific Islands. It is so geographically
specific for OTEC feasibility. You really need to have a pretty
quick drop off of the continental shelf in order to actually have
that really cold deep water and warm surface water. So it's
geographically constrained. The round-trip efficiency right now
still needs a lot of work and similar to the story of other types
of marine energy in order to do demos, it takes a lot of capital.


But I know that there are developers looking in like Puerto Rico
and Hawaii looking at the feasibility of OTEC. So I wouldn't
discount it. It's just it faces some of the same challenges. But
we've also been looking at even, can you lessen the amount of
gradients that you need to think about Ocean Thermal Energy
Capture? So we're actually working with a startup that is trying
to use smaller gradients to power ocean observing systems. So if
it can power it by essentially dropping the system down not that
far, and using the same principle of warm to low generating
power, maybe we can think about gradients in a different way, to
not just be the really big, really deep pipes that are trying to
run from the surface down to the deep ocean.


David Roberts


One more thing about marine energy. Tell us what is the
connection between marine energy and desalination? Or what is
the, let's say, the hoped for connection between marine energy
and desalination? Because I often hear them kind of discussed in
the same breath.


Jennifer Garson


So over the last few years, we've really been looking at the
potential for how would wave energy provide potable water. It
started actually with analysis that we did at the National
Renewable Energy Lab, looking at the feasibility from a power
perspective. Does the power performance potential for waves, is
it potentially compatible with reverse osmosis or for
desalination processes? And interestingly enough, we found that
it could actually be a good power source. So we actually
developed a prize competition called waves to water prize, where
we basically opened the aperture to say, there's only a limited
number of ideas here.


Can you bring us some really good ideas for wave power
desalination, but starting small for things like disaster relief
and recovery scenarios? Ultimately, over the course of three
years, we developed systems that were both hydraulic, so kind of
mechanically driven, and production of electricity to run RO
systems. And what we saw through that prize, and now a subsequent
$10 million solicitation that we're running right now, is there
are a number of really promising solutions that, particularly on
the hydraulic side, although some of the electricity, but using
essentially the power of waves to run through membranes to
desalinate water.


David Roberts


I have a super dumb question here, which is I'm picturing these
wave machines out in the middle of the ocean. Are they producing
clean water like on-site? Do you have to go harvest the water
from the machine? How does the delivery of the water from the
machine to where it's needed work?


Jennifer Garson


Great question. The answer right now is maybe both. I think it's
more feasible to imagine that essentially the reverse osmosis
system is running. You're basically pumping water back to an
onshore reverse osmosis system in a high pressure pump. And so
you're getting the fresh water at a tank act, actually at a pier
or on the shore. So you're essentially just using piping systems
so that the water delivery is onshore. There are some companies
that are thinking about almost like bladders to be filled out for
production in the more near shore. You're not looking at right
now, like, really deep offshore, but could you collect water
through these bladders, have some sort of collection methodology,
and bring it back to shore?


So I think we're both looking at kind of on device production and
essentially the system just being a conduit for either that power
mechanical force to run a reverse osmosis system onshore. We're
hopefully going to see over the next couple of years we're going
to be funding a number of demos and we're seeing a number of
demos also pop up in Europe in particular at looking at wave
power decal. But I think we're going to need solutions for
desalination that doesn't just require either really big, large
energy systems or only diesel generators because we're going to
need fresh water everywhere.


And we're trying to think about the simplicity of design of some
of these systems so that you can essentially just throw them out
in the water with an anchor and be able to provide potable fresh
water.


David Roberts


That would be nice.


Jennifer Garson


It'd be awesome. Yeah, use the water to make water. What could be
more simple but elegant if we can make it work?


David Roberts


So on marine energy, then, as you said at the beginning, this is
unlike hydro. Marine is in a sense among the newest or nascent or
sort of cutting edge versions of renewable energy. So I guess
before we leave this subject, I'm just curious, the next decade
in marine energy, do you expect it to reach meaningful scale in
that decade or is the next decade mainly going to be about
figuring it out? Sort of like where do you expect marine energy
to be in ten years?


Jennifer Garson


It's a complex answer I think when you're talking about grid
scale marine energy devices. I think it'll take us the next ten
years to really figure it out, get these systems in and out of
the water and really producing larger volumes of electricity. But
what I think the next decade really holds, it's really
interesting, is the possibility of marine energy powering. What
maybe from an energy perspective seems less meaningful, but from
an end use perspective is incredibly meaningful. And what do I
mean by that? I think we're seeing a lot of interesting solutions
for powering, things like ocean observing.


We know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the
surface of our ocean floor and part of that is because of power
limitations. And so we're working on a number of different
companies that are either using kind of fixed platforms or
floating platforms to provide power where we need it and that's
to both understand and observe our ocean.


David Roberts


Interesting.


Jennifer Garson


And I think over the next ten years you're going to see a lot of
different devices that are harnessing power for ocean observing.
There's also been a lot of meaningful progress at sort of the
micro-grid scale for marine energy, whether it's tidal or it's
wave energy, where we actually have a device up in a community of
only 75 people in Alaska and Igiugig that's producing power to
their grid right now. And I think we're going to see more of
these small scale devices in places where power is incredibly
meaningful. Even if it doesn't sound like a lot from a megawatt
or gigawatt perspective.


David Roberts


There's sort of bulk energy. Like we just need a lot of energy.
But then there's also these, as you say, these local sort of
resilience benefits and these benefits specifically to a lot of
vulnerable communities. Maybe just say a little bit more about
that sort of how you envision hydro working. Maybe not at a large
energy scale, but in some of these, but like in this community in
Alaska, that's quite significant for them to have steady power.
So talk about that a little bit.


Jennifer Garson


I think it's a story for both hydropower and marine renewable
energy that there are parts of our United States and parts of the
world that they need to look to their waters in order to actually
provide power, whether that's because of the seasonality or
available resources. And we've been working with a number of
communities, actually through a program called our Energy
Transitions Initiative Partnership Project, where rather than
say, here's a solution that you should have, maybe it's marine or
hydro, but working with these communities to say what are your
power and energy needs? And what are the types of systems that
can get you to 100% renewables and off diesel dependency? And
many communities that we're working with in Maine, the Pacific
Northwest and Alaska in particular are looking at marine energy
and small hydro as their pathways to releasing dependency from
diesel generators or from really high cost other forms of energy.


And even though these are kilowatts or megawatts, it's huge.


David Roberts


Yeah, just to sort of put an exclamation point on that, you're
talking about the sort of economics overall. But if you look at
the economics specifically in these local situations, like diesel
is gross, it's very expensive, it pollutes like crazy.


Jennifer Garson


Not only that, it's the cost, right? And right now, the last
couple of years, the price vulnerability of some of our more
vulnerable communities in the United States are so impacted by
diesel going up to prices that are literally unprecedented. And
if you're a small community, how do you absorb that?


David Roberts


Yeah, getting steady, predictable, just the predictableness of
it, the predictable price of it. It's hard to put a value on
that. That's very valuable in these local contexts.


Jennifer Garson


It is. And because if you are already paying a dollar, $52 a
kilowatt hour, even if we're developing solutions that come in at
say, 50-60 cents a kilowatt hour, that's still a substantial
price savings, more predictable power and we have better health
outcomes, better localized impacts. And so we take that really
seriously and view it as a kind of core objective for our
program, is that we really want to think about ways that we
derust these technologies to give better pathways to getting off
of diesel and providing more predictable power. And so when I
think about the impacts in the near term, particularly on marine
energy, this is one area where I think we do have the potential
to make a real material impact on people's lives if we can really
do wit these technologies and design them with the communities as
partners and with them in mind.


David Roberts


Right, okay, well, I've kept you too long. This is all
fascinating. I'm sure we could do an hour long pod on any one of
these issues or topics or technologies. So by way of wrapping up,
final question then. When you look ahead, you're sitting in sort
of a unique place where you have a view of all these water
related energy technologies over the next decade, let's say
through 2030 or 2035, which is a very crucial, as you well know,
a very crucial period for decarbonization. What do you think are
going to be the big water power stories? Like, some of these are
nascent, they're going to be developing. What do you think are
going to be sort of the breakout significant stories in water
power? If you had to pick a favorite one of your babies?


Jennifer Garson


Oh, you can't make me pick a favorite one. I'm going to give you
a couple and break your rule. I think it's going to be the
increasing importance of the role of the existing hydropower
fleet in an overall grid context at really maintaining grid
stability. I think we're going to see a first pump storage
project, at least one break ground and start serving the grid in
a way that we really need it to. And I think we are going to see
a number of communities with small marine energy systems that are
providing incredible, meaningful power. That's going to
demonstrate the criticality of us thinking about this
decarbonization at literally all scales that we need to solve
everything from watts all the way through gigawatts.


But I think the backbone of the existing fleet pump storage and
the criticality of small microgrid systems for places that may
not have other options, where this is really well suited, are the
things that I'm really excited about in the next decade.


David Roberts


Awesome. Well, Jen Garson of DOE, thank you so much for coming
on. This has been hugely educational. I really appreciate it.


Jennifer Garson


Of course. Well, thank you for having me on.


David Roberts


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