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Rehabilitating the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Hydropower Fleet
The Dalles Dam on the Columbia River, on the border between Oregon and Washington.
T
he U.S. Army Corps of Engineers runs the country’s biggest hydroelectric fleet, generating 23 gigawatts of clean, renewable energy. Keeping that fleet in good operating condition and ensuring that it can provide power at competitive rates requires continual maintenance and efforts to upgrade and rehabilitate generators and dams. Currently, the Army Corps is in the middle of a major, multiyear rehabilitation effort. In this interview, Steven Miles, the director of the Army Corps’ Hydroelectric Design Center (HDC), and Daniel Rabon, its national hydropower business line manager, tell Hydro Leader about the importance of that effort and what it entails. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.
20 | HYDRO LEADER | February 2021
Daniel Rabon: My current position is the national hydropower business line manager. I am based in our Washington, DC, headquarters. I have worked for the Army Corps for about 15 years with a bit of a break. I started in hydroleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS.
Steven Miles: I am a civil engineer and licensed as a professional engineer. I have two advanced degrees: an MBA and a master’s in strategic studies. After I graduated college, I spent 27 years in the army as an engineer officer. My last job in the army was district commander of the Portland district of the Army Corps. It was in that position that I fell in love with hydropower. The Portland district has almost 7,000 megawatts (MW) of hydropower, harnessing the power of the Columbia River and its tributaries.
When I transitioned off active duty, I was a consultant for a couple years for a firm in Portland, Oregon, that had an energy business line. About 8 years ago, this army civilian job with the Army Corps became available, and I was fortunate enough to be selected. Hydropower is one of the industries that I really hoped to be able to work in after my army career. It’s a green, non-carbon-emitting, sustainable resource that brings together computer engineers, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and hydraulic engineers, to name a few. My current position is director of HDC, a national center of expertise for the engineering side of the Army Corps. HDC is predominantly based in Portland, Oregon, with other offices east of the Mississippi divide. It employs about 175 engineers and scientists, and its primary role is to serve the 16 Army Corps districts with hydropower, engineering, and analytics work. We do the major engineering of the power train for the Army Corps’ hydropower plants, and we form part of the product delivery teams of the geographic districts where those power plants are located.
