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Water is one of the world's oldest sources of power. Today, hydropower accounts for nearly one-third of renewable electricity generation in the U.S., but as Harvest Public Media contributer Teresa Homsi reports, federal hurdles may prevent older hydroelectric plants from staying online and new projects from getting off the ground.
TERESA HOMSI, BYLINE: In Michigan's upper peninsula, 74 turbines are spinning inside the Sault Hydroelectric Plant and generating power for thousands of homes in the region.
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HOMSI: The plant is narrow, a quarter-mile long, and its red sandstone bricks hearken back to the Gilded Age, when the plant first opened in 1902.
ROGER LINE: And it's been running pretty much 24/7, 365 since then.
HOMSI: Roger Line is with the Cloverland Electric Cooperative, the utility company that owns the plant today. He says Cloverland's considered shutting the facility down because of energy costs.
LINE: If you were to buy the same amount of energy out on the market today, you could probably get it a little cheaper.
HOMSI: Ultimately, Cloverland's kept the plant open. Line says, it's not expensive to maintain and still generates a reliable flow of energy. But this back and forth isn't uncommon. A 2022 survey conducted by the Kleinschmidt Engineering Consulting Firm found that more than a third of hydro operators in the U.S.were actively thinking about decommissioning their facilities. Unlike wind or solar projects, hydro facilities require a federal license that must be renewed every 30 to 50 years, and plants often have to deal with dozens of federal, state and local agencies. It can be a bureaucratic nightmare, according to Malcolm Woolf from the National Hydropower Association.
MALCOLM WOOLF: It takes, on average, almost eight years to get a existing hydropower facility relicensed.
HOMSI: Four-hundred and fifty-one hydroelectric facilities - about 40% of the nation's fleet that's not federally owned - are facing license expirations in the next decade, according to the National Hydropower Association. The process, Woolf says, should be streamlined and that there also needs to be a way for agencies to settle disputes when they impose contradictory requirements.
WOOLF: Part of what makes the hydropower licensing so maddening is that there's no agency in control. If one of the dozens of agencies misses its statutory obligations, there's nothing anyone else can do about it but wait.
HOMSI: Right now, about 6% of the nation's electricity generation comes from hydropower, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Caitlin Grady is a civil engineer with the George Washington University. She says, hydroelectricity plays an important role in keeping the country's power grid balanced because unlike other renewable sources, it's consistent.
CAITLIN GRADY: We will not have a sustainable grid with just solar and wind unless we're also building a ton of batteries, and I mean tons and tons and tons of batteries.
HOMSI: Batteries that store the energy wind and solar generate - Grady says adding turbines to existing dams could increase energy output, and technology that uses water and gravity to act as a battery is another way, Grady says, the grid could be more resilient. But century-old hydroelectric plants are still churning out power, like at the Keokuk Renewable Center, which sits on the Mississippi River. The plant borders Iowa and Illinois, and operators say it's been business as usual since 1913. Brad Todd, with the utility company Amaren, says there's no plan to decommission Keokuk, which supplies electricity to 75,000 homes a year.
BRAD TODD: It's great for the customers. It's safe. It's efficient, you know, and Amaren plans on keeping ours around basically forever, if we can.
HOMSI: The plant has new turbines that are more energy efficient, but even with upgrades to the fleet, the basic idea remains the same. Water keeps on moving and generating power for millions of Americans. For NPR News, I'm Teresa Homsi in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
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