Small Hydro

HYDROVISION offers three opportunities to tour hydro plants, research facilities

HYDROVISION offers three opportunities to tour hydro plants, research facilities
(photo courtesy Emrgy)

Attendees of HYDROVISION International 2024 will have the opportunity to attend three unique technical tours featuring hydroelectric plants and some research facilities.

Pre-conference tours are a popular offering at the event and a valuable chance to get an inside view of how different plants are operated and maintained, as well as insight into civil issues — such as dam safety and gate maintenance – and environmental considerations.

This July in Denver, HYDROVISION will feature three pre-conference technical tours:

Monday, July 15

This full-day tour takes attendees to two operating hydropower plants: One is the 2.6 MW Robert V. Trout (Carter Lake) facility, owned by Northern Water, which began operating in 2011 with two Francis turbine-generator units. It is part of the Colorado-Big Thompson project, with six original hydropower plants owned by the Bureau of Reclamation and two added more recently by Northern Water. The other is the 45 MW Estes powerplant, operated by Reclamation and also part of the Colorado-Big Thompson project. It began operating in 1950 and takes diversion water delivered from the Marys Lake Power Plant and holds it in Lake Estes for the project.

Tuesday, July 16

This full-day tour has three stops: One of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Flatirons campus, which features the electrical hydropower lab and controllable grid interface and a demonstration of the updated Renewable Energy Discovery Island interactive app. Another is the Bureau of Reclamation’s Technical Service Center, where about 570 scientists, engineers and others operate a materials and hydraulic engineering laboratory. And the third is the 5 MW Boulder Canyon hydro plant, owned by the City of Boulder. This plant is more than 100 years old and was modernized in 2013 and 2014.

Tuesday, July 16

This half-day tour visits a distributed hydropower installation and canal floating solar installation in operation, developed by Emrgy and located near Denver Water’s Ralston Dam. Other stops include Emrgy’s CORE manufacturing facility, Ralston Dam and the Headworks Building at the Northwater Treatment Plant, which contains a small hydropower turbine-generator unit.

Watch the HYDROVISION website for complete details on the tours, and add one when you register for the event. HYDROVISION International takes place July 15 through 18 in Denver, Colo., U.S.