ADVERTISEMENT
HDR’s Work on Major Hydropower and Pumped Storage Projects Across the Nation
An artist’s rendering of a pumped storage project.
H
DR is an engineering, architectural, environmental, and construction services consulting firm that has worked on major infrastructure projects around the world. Its hydropower practice brings together 300 specialists working across North America on major conventional hydroelectric and pumped storage projects. In this interview, Rick Miller, HDR’s senior vice president for hydropower services and a recipient of the hydropower industry’s Kenneth Henwood Award, recognizing his lifetime of industry contributions and passion for hydropower, tells Hydro Leader about the practice’s current projects and current trends in the hydropower industry. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
14 | HYDRO LEADER | September 2020
hydroleadermagazine.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF HDR.
Rick Miller: I am proud to lead the hydropower and pumped storage practice for HDR. I’ve been in the hydropower business for a little over 40 years. I have a degree in civil engineering from Auburn University and worked nights and weekends to receive my master’s degree from the University of South Carolina while working full time at Duke Energy, which was then called Duke Power. I got involved with hydropower engineering through my work at Duke Power in the late 1970s and then moved on
to hydropower operations, grid integration, and dam safety. I eventually served in an asset management operations role, during which time I managed 2,000 megawatts (MW) of pumped storage capacity and six conventional stations. These ranged from 1970s-era facilities with several hundred MW of capacity to small, 1913‑vintage, 1 MW facilities that we lovingly referred to as coffee grinders, and which are still up and running today. In 1991, I was the operations leader for Duke Power when the Bad Creek Pumped Storage Project, the second-to-last major pumped storage project developed in the United States, was commissioned. Then I moved back to Charlotte, North Carolina, to help plan and implement the modernization of Duke Power’s conventional hydropower fleet in the Carolinas. My colleagues and I successfully accomplished that task over a 15‑year period at a cost of more than $350 million. When Duke Energy acquired assets in South America in 1999, I became the director of operations in Brazil, where it had several thousand MW of conventional hydropower. I lived there for 3½ years, handling all the operations, engineering, health and safety issues, and integration with the national grid operator, which is located in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia.
