It seems that there is a way for the U.S. to increase its hydropower energy, as opposed to my opinion from last week’s post. While we will not be building any new dams, there are several dams that have yet to be outfitted to produce hydropower. There are 80,000 dams in the U.S. but only 2,500 are producing hydropower currently. The AP stated, “The Department of Energy concluded last year that the U.S. could boost its hydropower capability by 15 percent by fitting nearly 600 existing dams with generators.” Just think if even more dams were outfitted for hydropower how much we could increase our renewable energy.
While I support hydropower, it isn’t all rainbows and ponies. Building these hydropower plants is expensive, they cost more than building a natural gas burning plant. As usual, money determines everything, which is why it is taking us so long to get on the renewable bandwagon in general. So unless funding comes about, converting dams to produce energy is most likely limited. Dams also have to be approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in order to build the actual hydropower plant. They issued 25 licenses last year. It is now up to those dams to acquire the funding and put the plant into action. All in all, a long process, but for a good cause.
There is also the issue of droughts and how that can impact hydropower outputs. So while hydropower is a good renewable energy source, we can not depend on it alone since much of the U.S. has remained in a drought in recent years.
I hope that we can start to look for renewable options like refitting current dams for hydropower, because we need many renewable energy sources in order to keep up with our high energy demands. Solar and wind will most likely not be enough since they are both weather dependent. I think a combo of those two options, plus hydropower and nuclear could be a good direction for the U.S. to head. That way we can eventually stop being dependent on coal, oil and natural gas for our energy needs.
