Latest / What's Your Problem? / Making Dam Good Hydropower

Transcript

Making Dam Good Hydropower · What's Your Problem?

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is What's Your Problem, the
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: show where I talk to people who are trying to
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: make technological progress. My guest today is Gia Schneider. Ga
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: is the co founder and CEO of Natel Energy, and
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: her problem is this, can you get all the good
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: parts of hydro electric power without the bad? In order
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: to solve that problem, there's sort of two sub problems
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  Speaker 1: that Gia has to solve. First, how do you build
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: a turbine that can go into a river and generate
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: power without chopping up fish? That, as you'll hear in
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the first part of the show, is an interesting engineering challenge.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: And then in the second part of the show, Gia
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: talks about a second problem to solve, how do you
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  Speaker 1: put dams in rivers without messing up the broader ecosystem?
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  Speaker 1: And I have to say I found that part of
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  Speaker 1: the conversation particularly interesting. For one thing, it involves beavers,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: always fun. Second, and perhaps more importantly, that part of
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  Speaker 1: the conversation changed the way I think about rivers. So
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  Speaker 1: let's start with the Let's start with the happy. Why
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: is hydro power great?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, hydropower is a great source of energy because it
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  Speaker 2: is reliable and predictable. What that means is that if
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  Speaker 2: I'm sitting here today and I'm looking forward at what
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  Speaker 2: I can expect to get out of my power plant
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  Speaker 2: over to say, the next day, the next week, I
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  Speaker 2: have a very good idea of what I will get
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  Speaker 2: minute to minute, hour to hour. And that reliability is
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  Speaker 2: really valuable in terms of balancing out the operation of
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  Speaker 2: a grid and keeping a grid reliable.
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  Speaker 1: Right that, and that is not true. Were not as
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: true importantly of solar power or wind power. Right, those
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  Speaker 1: are more intermittent and less predictable. So those are reasons
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: why hydro power is great. Why is hydro power bad?
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  Speaker 2: What's the problem? Yeah, so hydro is The challenges with
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  Speaker 2: hydro or the negatives really come from the fact that
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  Speaker 2: the way in which hydropower works is by taking water
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  Speaker 2: and moving it across an elevation drop through a turbine.
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  Speaker 2: And to get that elevation drop, we generally have built dams,
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  Speaker 2: and those dams then change the way in which rivers
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  Speaker 2: flow in sometimes very material ways, and rivers are effectively
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  Speaker 2: the circulatory system of the planet. And so as you
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  Speaker 2: can imagine, as you start to like change those flow patterns,
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  Speaker 2: that has some real implications for the ecosystem around those rivers.
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  Speaker 1: Right, So dams can mess up the rivers, correct, and
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: then the turbines themselves can be bad as well.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, the turbines themselves, and you know have they
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  Speaker 2: are amazing machines that have been highly engineered for high
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  Speaker 2: efficiency and performance. They are, they're very outstanding engineering products.
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  Speaker 2: At the same time, they aren't very safe in many
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  Speaker 2: cases for passage of aquatic life.
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  Speaker 1: They're like fish blenders in the middle of the river.
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  Speaker 2: It's not necessarily always quite as bad as fish blenders,
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  Speaker 2: but yes, bottom line is you can kind of average
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  Speaker 2: it out and say like one in five fish through
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  Speaker 2: a conventional turbine generally won't survive.
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  Speaker 1: So there's sort of two levels of problems. One is
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  Speaker 1: the dam and the other is the turbine. Correct.
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  Speaker 2: Correct.
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  Speaker 1: So let's start with the turbine problem. Just in the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: case of the US, What are the main fish of
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  Speaker 1: concern species of concern? What fish are getting chopped up
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  Speaker 1: by turbines?
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  Speaker 2: Well, there are many fish, of course. The species of
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: concern that raise to the kind of top of the
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  Speaker 2: list from a human perspective at least are salmon because
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  Speaker 2: sand and as a commercial fishery that has a lot
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  Speaker 2: of value, and eel is a more recent species of concern.
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  Speaker 2: Eel is less because it's a commercial fishery, but more
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  Speaker 2: actually because eel are a critical part of the life
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  Speaker 2: cycle for freshwater muscles. And one of the things that
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  Speaker 2: we've really started to understand in the last decade or
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  Speaker 2: so is that freshwater muscles are really critical to water quality,
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  Speaker 2: and we as humans care about water quality a lot,
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  Speaker 2: even if we might not care that much about freshwater
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  Speaker 2: muscles or eel.
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  Speaker 1: So just to be clear, like if you put a
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  Speaker 1: turbine in a river and the eel get chopped up
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  Speaker 1: in it, the water quality.
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  Speaker 2: Gets worse, yes, bottom line, yep.
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  Speaker 1: And I've heard of you know, ladders and things like
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  Speaker 1: that for fish, like why didn't pre existing solutions work
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  Speaker 1: very well?
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  Speaker 2: So actually we have focused quite a bit on getting
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  Speaker 2: fish upstream with ladders and have had you know, some
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  Speaker 2: degree of success with that for certain species. Eel and
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  Speaker 2: salmon actually are both able to navigate ladders of different
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  Speaker 2: types upstream, eel in particular quite well. The thing that
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  Speaker 2: we had focused less on is how do we get
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: fish back downstream safely? So actually building ways to get
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  Speaker 2: fish to move upstream is in some ways maybe a
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  Speaker 2: more accessible problem than how do you deal with getting
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: fish to move safely downstream? Where from a hydropower perspective,
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  Speaker 2: you want most of that water moving through your turbine
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  Speaker 2: because the amount of water going through your turbine is
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: directly relevantly on energy you create.
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  Speaker 1: Right, So it's a difficult trade off. You could either
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: route the water around the turbine and then the fish
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  Speaker 1: don't die, but then you don't get any power because
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: you rounted all the water around your.
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  Speaker 2: Turb right, right, And so the mitigation, the interim mitigation
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  Speaker 2: that folks have started to explore, is to put screens.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: So not just so all hydropower plants have what are
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: called trash racks to keep like, you know, shopping carts
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  Speaker 2: and logs and all sorts of things that rip from
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  Speaker 2: going through the turbine, but those trash racks you know,
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  Speaker 2: will have you know, an inch to four inch spacing,
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  Speaker 2: so quite a few things fish, you know, can make
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  Speaker 2: it through. So folks have looked at screens. But the
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  Speaker 2: problem with screens is that the finer the screen, the
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: more likely you are to keep fish out. But the
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  Speaker 2: finer the screen, the more efficiency loss you have across
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  Speaker 2: the screen.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: The screen it just gets covered and leaves Schmitz and whatever. Yeah, okay,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: so your notion is like, let's let's fix the blade itself.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Can we make a blade that will generate power and
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: not kill fish exactly? Exactly? Seems seems hard, Like when
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: you're setting out to do this, what what are you
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: thinking about?
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  Speaker 2: So conventional turbines particularly, you know, probably most folks are
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: familiar with, say a wind turbine. They are circular in nature,
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  Speaker 2: and so what that means as they spin is the
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  Speaker 2: tips are moving faster than the center of the blade.
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  Speaker 2: If anybody's been on the merry ground, you know that.
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  Speaker 2: So one thought we had was because speed is directly
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: proportional to the speed at which something hits you, is
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  Speaker 2: going to have a relation to how hard or how
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  Speaker 2: much it hurts.
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  Speaker 1: Right right, if you're a fish, you're more likely to
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  Speaker 1: die by a blade that's spinning really fast, correct exactly.
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  Speaker 2: And so one way to change the ratio and have
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: a consistent speed across the whole length of the blade
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  Speaker 2: is to instead of having blades move in a circle
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  Speaker 2: around a central hub, to if you think about taking
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: the center hub and a turban and splitting it in
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  Speaker 2: two and stretching it apart. It was a very different.
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  Speaker 1: Design, sounds very complicated.
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  Speaker 2: It was hard to picture, yes, And I think bottom line,
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  Speaker 2: we realized after a lot of work, we didn't need
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: to do that. We could just make a better blade
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: shape on a conventional turbine design. But that took quite
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: a bit of work to get to that point.
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  Speaker 1: How did you figure that out?
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Well, the simple version is a lot of trial and
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: error and a lot of you know, experimentation. Where we
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: ended up is actually I think a very simple and
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  Speaker 2: elegant solution, which is which which belies the amount of
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  Speaker 2: work that went into it.
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  Speaker 1: Often in the case like it's easy once you know
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  Speaker 1: how to do it right, figuring out how to do
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  Speaker 1: it is hard.
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  Speaker 2: Right and and the simple elegant solution basically it comes
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  Speaker 2: down to two things. One is that the leading edge
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  Speaker 2: of the blade itself is fairly thick relative to the
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  Speaker 2: size of fish interacting with it, and so that is
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  Speaker 2: kind of intuitive. If you have a you have a
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  Speaker 2: blunt edge moving through the water as opposed to a
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  Speaker 2: knife edge moving through the water. The blunt edge is
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  Speaker 2: going to be better for interacting with like things get deflected,
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  Speaker 2: fish get deflected, or if.
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  Speaker 1: You think of it from the fish's point of view,
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  Speaker 1: like if you're swimming into a knife blade, that's going
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  Speaker 1: to mess you up more than if you're swimming into
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  Speaker 1: like a little wall right.
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  Speaker 2: Right, like a rounded a rounded wall or rounded rounded rounded.
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  Speaker 2: So that's one part and then the other part is
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  Speaker 2: and actually the physics around it are fairly interesting because
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  Speaker 2: that rounded edge creates a almost like an air bag,
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  Speaker 2: like a you can think of it like as a
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  Speaker 2: as a field like water water bag, and it basically
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  Speaker 2: helps deflect stuff around the blade.
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  Speaker 1: So that part's good stuff, including fish.
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  Speaker 2: Stuff including fish. And then the other part was to
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  Speaker 2: solve that problem of the fact that the tips move
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  Speaker 2: faster than the hub than the center, and to do
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  Speaker 2: that we then introduced a swoop forward of the blade.
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  Speaker 2: And that is again you know a little bit of
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  Speaker 2: physics is what that. But the way to intutorly understand
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  Speaker 2: it is that if you're if you're swimming through water
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  Speaker 2: and you get struck with a glancing blow as opposed
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  Speaker 2: to a direct blow, the glancing blow hurts a lot less.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want a glancing blo those are my choice, right, And.
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  Speaker 2: So by swooping the blade forward, it simply it basically
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  Speaker 2: means that you don't have direct strikes. You have glanc
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  Speaker 2: Dange strikes, and the energy of that impact is now
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  Speaker 2: dramatically less and that leads directly to survival. So all
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  Speaker 2: of this is around the leading edge of the blade,
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  Speaker 2: and that's all tied up with fish safety. The rest
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  Speaker 2: of the blade shape is all about performance again because
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: we have to have high performance, hig efficiency machines. And
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  Speaker 2: so the twin engineering challenges were this then balancing the
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  Speaker 2: shape on the leading edge with the shape of the
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  Speaker 2: rest of the blade. So we have a highly fished
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  Speaker 2: safe leading edge with a high performing rest of the blade. Right.
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  Speaker 1: So now you've figured out how to not kill fish,
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  Speaker 1: but you have to make sure you can still generate power.
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  Speaker 1: It still has to work.
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  Speaker 2: It still has to work, still has to work at
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  Speaker 2: you know, ninety ninety three percent efficiency. That's these are
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  Speaker 2: very very high performance machines. And then I think the
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  Speaker 2: other additional construt that we face is a design approach
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  Speaker 2: that can design blades that are able to go into
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  Speaker 2: all of the existing hydropower plants that we have today.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: When we're talking about hydro, we're talking about dealing with
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: a large, existing installed base that we want to upgrade
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: to be fish safe, which means we need to go
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: into the existing concrete and all the other stuff that's there.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: So this is essentially a replacement part building a whole
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: new system. We're building a replacement part. So just so
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: you figure out how to build this thing, and just
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: tell me, what does it look like to somebody who
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: doesn't know about all the swooping and the wide blade.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Just if you look at it, what does it look like?
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  Speaker 2: It looks like a propeller, but with a very punky,
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: you know, big thick leading edge.
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  Speaker 1: Uh huh, Yeah, I mean I looked at it and
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  Speaker 1: I thought like, oh, it just looks like a jet
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  Speaker 1: engine kind of right. There's like a around there's like
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: a metal cylinder with the blade inside of it. Correct, Like, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you wouldn't know. You wouldn't know how hard it was
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: or that it doesn't kill fish if you looked at it.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: That's correct.
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  Speaker 1: There is there a moment when you when you test it,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: is there like, okay, we made this thing, let's see
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: if it kills fish. Like, how do you figure out
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: if it kills fish.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: We have a water tank and a pump and we
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: recirculate water through a set of pipes through a turbine.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: That turbine has a transparent housing around it, so we
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: can take high speed video so we can see the
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: fish as they go through.
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  Speaker 1: Cool see what they do. You're just dump fishing and
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: say good luck fish.
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  Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, and then we I mean, this is all
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  Speaker 2: very scientific, right, So we tag each fish that goes
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  Speaker 2: through the turbine, we capture it at the end, we
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: have we inspect the fish before, we inspect the fish
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: after we hold the fish for forty eight hours after
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: they go through the turbine. We have a control population.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: So traditional turbines you said kill about twenty percent of
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the fish that pass through them. What percent of the
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: fish that passed through your turbine are killed by the.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Turbine less than two percent. So we have done tests
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  Speaker 2: that have one hundred percent survival, so zero fish die.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: So you got your turbine. It doesn't kill fish. And
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  Speaker 1: by the way, how does it compare in terms of efficiency?
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  Speaker 1: How is it at generating power compared to comparable turbines.
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  Speaker 2: Similar So it's not the case where we can always
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  Speaker 2: say that there is no trade off. Some of the
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  Speaker 2: most efficient hydroturbines out there, you know, approach efficiencies of
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  Speaker 2: ninety four ninety five percent. I think right now we
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: top out at around ninety three percent. So for the
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  Speaker 2: most efficient, there will be some turbines that are a
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: little bit more efficient. However, when you think about prioritization
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: of fish passage, and you think about a very efficient turbine,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: but now you need to put a screen in front
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: of it, you end up with net net delivered cost
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: of energy relative to fish safe performance is definitely better
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: when you can pass fish safely through a turbine, even
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: if it's ninety three percent instead of ninety four percent efficient.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: So you got your turbine. It works. Where are your
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: turbines in the world today generating energy?
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Today? We have three projects installed, one in Oregon, one
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: in Maine, and one in Austria.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: And are these like pilots? Are these like big utility scale?
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Are they like? What is the nature of these three?
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: They're commercial installations. They are generating electricity connected to the grid.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: We're looking at things in Virginia, in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Switzerland, France,
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  Speaker 2: and now most recently up in Ontario, and I should
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: be very clear, these are all deals that we're working
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: on that are not yet closed with a couple of
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: different utilities. So I think what we are I think
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: really at an interesting tipping point from a commercial perspective,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: where the industry is finally realizing that there is a
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: way to upgrade all of these old assets, maintain or
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: actually improve in some cases the power output simply because
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: we're replacing really old turbans with new turbans, and the
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: new turbines are higher performance and do so without killing fish.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, our value proposition
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: simply is, if you're going to spend billions of dollars
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: on equipment that's going to run for forty or fifty years,
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  Speaker 2: and you could put in a conventional machine which will
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: kill fish, or a machine that is not going to
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: kill fish, why would you not choose the machine that
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: is not going to kill fish.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Are there regulatory requirements that make it that sort of
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: push utilities towards choosing your turbine? I mean, is it
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: like if they don't choose your turbine, then they have
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: to put in a really fine screen and it's going
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: to be worse for them anyways, that's correct.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, I think where we're seeing the most immediate uptake
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: is places where there are regulations for safe passage which
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: require either of putting in a screen with a bypass,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: so you generally are reducing energy because you're putting more
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: water around the turbine instead of through in addition to
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: the screen, which adds to costs, or in some cases
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: you're having to shut down at night for three or
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: four or five months out of the year while fish
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: are moving. Things like that.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute to discuss gia's long
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: term problem. Once you fix turbines, what about dams? How
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: do you put a dam in a river without messing
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: up the ecosystem? Part of the answer, It turns out
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: you ask yourself what would beavers do. There's another problem
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: with hydro power, right, which is the dams themselves mess
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: up river ecosystems, and a turbine that doesn't kill fish
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: doesn't solve that, right, or it doesn't solve it entirely.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: What are you going to do about that one?
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think the answer is multi layered, and
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: in general our view is that there are certain existing
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: dams today that make sense to be removed. That's a
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: position that and in general I would say that you'll
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: find that to be a position across the industry. They're
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: just are in some cases stuff that we built, maybe
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: even one hundred years ago that just don't make sense
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: to keep in in today. And they should be right.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: And it's a basic cost benefit, like it's a high
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: ecological cost, it's not generating that much power, I mean,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: it's not the basic calculus.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Or it's also just a high operations cost. So it's
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: a combination of commercial and environmental factors driving the decision making.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: So the next layer after dam removal is what we
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: think of as reconfiguration. So if I have an existing project,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: it makes sense to stay in economically it's a good,
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: good asset. But maybe there are some things that I
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: can do in addition to putting in fish safe turbines
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: that will improve the upstream passage by having a better
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: bypass or a more naturalistic upstream passage zone for example.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Those are reasonable, But you have this big dream. Tell
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: me about that.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So the big dream is what we call restoration hydro,
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: which is to go full stop in taking the lessons
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: learned from river restoration over the last couple decades take
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: inspiration from nature's engineers, which are beavers, which do build dams.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: And what's fascinating when you look at beavers is that
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: you can find beaver dams that are very large, hundreds
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: of feet long, fifteen feet high. You can find beaver
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: dams that have been around for a century, can be
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: very persistent. And what's interesting when you look at those
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: structures is they actually have very positive impacts on the
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: river ecosystem with respect to groundwater recharge. They slow water
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: runoff down that helps get war water into the ground,
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: that helps to benefit the water table. They create more habitat,
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: more diverse habitat around in that particular part of the
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: river reach, which is beneficial for FIT. So the big
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: picture dream is to is to take is basically a
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: nature based approach to thinking about rethinking hydro, certainly for
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: new build projects, but potentially also for reconfiguring more dramatically
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: existing projects.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: I get that beavers are cool, like beavers are indeed amazing,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: but I don't think I get exactly. I mean, are
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: you just saying we should build dams like beavers? Like
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: I don't really understand practically.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Building dams that fit what you mean. Yeah, The concept
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: behind restoration hydro is to realize that what we see
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: in rivers today is not the way rivers actually were
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: in their natural state. The rivers in their natural state
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: two hundred years ago in North America were full of logjams,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: woody debris, beaver dams, all sorts of barriers to flow.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Those barriers helped mitigate floods because you si water run
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: off down across the landscape. They helped drive groundwater recharge.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: They have a whole bunch of.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Ben that's cool. So like when we picture a river
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: and we just picture it free flowing, that's actually not
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: natural either. That is the product of some amount of
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: human intervention.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: A huge amount of reream is intervention for navigation for
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: all sorts of reasons. Right, we want to be able
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: to drive a boat straight through the river.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: So the dream is is you sort of get a
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: sense of what the natural dams might have been and
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: build those and generate power from them. Like that's the dream.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: That's the dream, And the reality, of course, is that
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: it's going to be one step back from that, because
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: you know, we live in an existing built infrastructure with
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: a lot of stuff that we have to adapt. But
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: I think that that is a pathway that we feel
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: pretty strongly we're going to have to go down anyway
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: in the context of climate change, because if we look
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: at the increase in extreme weather events and precipitation events,
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: both extreme floods and extreme droughts, the common problem is
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: we're getting too much or not enough water in the
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: At the wrong given moment, right.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: And so what dams do, whether they're man made or natural,
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: is help to spread water out across time and across space,
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: and that is going to be a critical part of
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: adapting to climate change, which we are going to have
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: to do. We have a certain amount of climate change
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: embedded in our atmosphere today, we are seeing it already,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: and so the view for us around restoration hydros, it's
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: a way to start to blend this future of how
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: do we deal with climate change from a water resource
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: management perspective with also adding to the renewable energy supply.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: It's cool, It's a cool it's a cool way of
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: thinking about the world that I had not thought of before.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: So I appreciate it's fun to have a new way
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: of thinking about the world.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that this is critical for
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: us in general, for everyone who's working to tackle the
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: clean energy transition, because if you think about what we're doing,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: we are basically replacing fossil fuel resource extraction with something else,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: and that something else is not necessarily a world that
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: is biodiverse. It's a world like I can fully imagine
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: a world where we have made the clean energy transition.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: We are using when sun and water and geothermal energy
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: to power all of our energy needs, but in the
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: process of doing that, we have mined the earth massively.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: We have huge industrial scale build out of everything, and
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: that's a world that is not necessarily very biodiverse, but
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: is powered by clean energy. And so I think that
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: the one of the other reasons why I find hydro
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: interesting is because hydro has one hundred years of history
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: dealing with and thinking about and having lessons learned of
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: how how can we we can do renewable energy one
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: way that has a big negative environmental impact, or we
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: can embed criteria that prioritizes biodiversity and environmental criteria. And
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: we need to think about that not just for hydro,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: but for batteries, for solar, for wind, et cetera. Across
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: the board.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: for almost done, but first we have to do a
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: lightning round, which is just a lot of questions somewhat
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: more random than the other questions I've asked you so far.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: For example, what's one thing you missed about Texas where
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: you grew up.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: The farm, being on a farm?
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Is it right that you lived in a cabin that
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: your dad built like I sort of caught glimpses of that,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: but what's the true story of that?
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: That is the truth. He drove to our Arkansas, brought
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: back logs and built the house in which I grew
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: up with the help of some local high school students,
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: and so that is actually true.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Where are the tacos better Texas or California, Baja Mexico. Well, sure,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: literally where fish tacos were invented.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: I think both Sexes and California are fine. I've had,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: I've had have equally great tacos in both both places.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: What's one thing you learned from setting up the carbon
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: emissions trading tests at Credit SUEEE early in your career that.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: It is possible to move policy in a direction that
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: supports environmental outcomes and aligns with the general like capitalist framework,
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: so it is possible to do that. It takes a
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: lot of thought, effort and care.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: What's your favorite river, Oh, the McCloud, tell me about
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the McLoud.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: It is an amazing cold, like super cold water river
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: flows into Lake Shasta, and so unfortunately upstream migration is
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: blocked at Lake Shasta, and we're there. We go there
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: once a year, generally in the summers. It's a great
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: fishing trout fishing stream. It's just incredibly pristine, beautiful, just
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: a beautiful place.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Gia Schneider is the co founder and CEO of Nattel Energy.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Edith Russolo and Gabriel Hunter Chang.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: It was edited by Karen Chakerjie and engineered by Sarah Bruger.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot FM.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.