Matthew
september 2022VOLUME 3 ISSUE 8 ydro HLeader
Roberts:
Hydropower Software and Automation Solutions
Emerson’s
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4 | HYDRO LEADER | September 2022 hydroleadermagazine.com EMERSON.OFCOURTESYPHOTO Hydro Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for July/August and November/December by an American company established in 2009. STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Elaine Robbins, Copyeditor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Eliza Moreno, Web Designer Caroline Polly, Production Assistant and Social Media Coordinator Tom Wacker, Advertising Coordinator Patricia Bown, Media Assistant Eve Giordano, Media Assistant William Polly, Media Assistant Milo Schmitt, Media Assistant Amanda Schultz,Media Assistant SUBMISSIONS: Hydro Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions. However, the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request. For more information, please contact our office at (202) 698-0690 or hydro.leader@waterstrategies.com ADVERTISING: Hydro Leader accepts half-page and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 kris.polly@waterstrategies.comor or Tom Wacker at tom.wacker@waterstrategies.com CIRCULATION: Hydro Leader is distributed to all hydroelectric facility owners in the United States, to hydrorelated businesses, and to every member of Congress and governor’s office. For address corrections or additions, or if you would prefer to receive Hydro Leader in electronic form, please contact us at admin@waterstrategies.com COVER PHOTO: Matthew Roberts, Director of Renewable Projects, Emerson. Photo courtesy of Emerson. Contents September 2022 Volume 3, Issue 8 5 Specialized Services By Kris Polly 8 Matthew AutomationSoftwareEmerson’sRoberts:HydropowerandSolutions 14 Mavel’s New LowHead Hydropower and Flood Control Project in Tass, Hungary 18 Western Machine Works: Specialized Part Fabrication for the Hydro Industry 22 Duncan White of ViewTech Borescopes: Advanced Devices for Remote Visual Inspections 26 Kamal Gautam of rPlus Hydro: Connecting the Global Hydro Community Through the Khimti Forum 30 The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Owner’s Dam Safety Program HALF-CENTURY LEADERS 34 Former andofonEluidCommissionerReclamationMartinez:ReflectionstheDevelopmentWaterManagementConservation 39 JOB LISTINGS 8 Matthew AutomationSoftwareEmerson’sRoberts:HydropowerandSolutions Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com Copyright © 2022 Water Strategies LLC. Hydro Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Hydro Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Hydro Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty by Water Strategies LLC or Hydro Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised. ydro HLeader hydro.leaderhydroleadermagazine.com hydroleadermag hydro_leadr /company/water-strategies-llc
Duncan White, the director of sales and marketing at ViewTech Borescopes, tells us about his company’s devices, which can inspect and photograph small interior spaces within turbines and other hydro and municipal water–related structures.
By Kris Polly When most people think of hydropower, they think of dams and turbines. Needless to say, those are important, but there are many other elements—both physical and digital—that go into turning flowing water into electricity. This month, we focus on several of those services, including the provision of computerized control systems, specialty machining, and borescope inspection devices.
In our cover story, we speak with Matthew Roberts, the director of renewable projects at Emerson, about how the company helps hydropower clients replace obsolete control systems—some of them purely mechanical—with modern computer-based controls and software solutions.
Next, we speak with Mavel Cofounder and Co-owner Jan Šíp about an interesting new low-head project in Tass, Hungary. The dam, located on a channel of the Danube River, can generate hydropower or pump in reverse to control floodwaters. We also speak with Rob Adams of Western Machine Works, which fabricates specialized parts for the hydro industry, sometimes reverse-engineering components and generating manufacturing prints for parts manufactured a century ago.
Kamal Gautam, the director of engineering at rPlus Hydro, has a career in hydropower that spans many countries and continents. In 2019, during the isolation caused by the COVID 19 pandemic, he decided to reconnect with colleagues from the first project he worked on: the Khimti Project in his native Nepal. In our interview, he tells us about the Khimti Forum, the virtual lecture series that resulted, and about his current work at rPlus.
Next, David Capka of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission updates us on recent developments in the agency’s Owner’s Dam Safety Program.
Water Strategies ” “ 4 E Street SE • Washington, DC 20003 www.waterstrategies.com • (202) 698-0690
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Finally, we continue our Half-Century Leaders feature with an interview with Eluid Martinez, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation and state engineer of New Mexico, about the insights he has gleaned from his long years of experience. From the systems that control entire fleets of dams to the tiny pieces without which their turbines wouldn’t work, specialty services are indispensable to the hydropower industry. I hope you find this month’s issue interesting and enlightening. H Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Hydro Leader magazine and the president and CEO of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com
Kris Polly,
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Emerson is a leading technology and software company that helps customers replace obsolete control systems at their hydropower plants with modern computer-based controls and software solutions. The result, says Matthew Roberts, the company’s director of renewable projects, is improved performance and more efficient and flexible hydro operations. In this interview, he tells us more.
Hydro Leader: Would you give us a sense of the various solutions you provide for the hydro market?
EMERSON.OFCOURTESYPHOTOS
Emerson is a trusted hydropower advisor with deep expertise and a comprehensive portfolio of solutions enabling reliable operation of governors, individual plants, or a fleet of run-of-river, dammed, or pumped-storage hydro generators.
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Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
Matthew Roberts: Emerson is a large technology and software company that is more than 130 years old and as of 2021 had approximately 87,000 employees and $18 billion in global sales. I am part of a group within Emerson’s automation solutions business that provides software, technologies, and services to the power industry, automating over 1.4 million megawatts of power generation globally. My group handles the implementation of projects within the renewable sector.
Matthew Roberts: I’ve been in the power industry for 17 years with an emphasis on the hydro sector. I started as an engineer at American Governor, a small hydro controls company, and advanced through various roles with increasing responsibility, including project, engineering, and operations management. When Emerson acquired American Governor in 2020, I became part of its renewable power team, retaining my focus on hydro. After a short while, I was promoted to director of renewable projects, overseeing not only our hydro projects, but also our solar, wind, and battery energy storage projects.
Matthew Roberts: Emerson’s Hydropower Software and Automation Solutions
Hydro Leader: Would you give us an overview of Emerson as a company and its various business lines?
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Matthew Roberts: What’s interesting about hydropower facilities is that power generation is not their only function. Many of these plants or dams were built for other purposes, such as flood control or irrigation, and also support recreation and safeguard the surrounding ecosystems. That means that water conveyance and water management are critical parts of their operating criteria. At some of the most fundamental operational layers, you’re trying to control the flow of water going through the dam through either the turbine or the spillway. On the energy production and grid operation control side, you’re thinking about how much water is flowing through the plant, which translates into how much power you’re making. When the local transmission operators send a dispatch saying, “I need such and such number of megawatts,” the control system is what changes the flow of water or the delivery of fuel into the turbine to generate the electricity needed to satisfy that demand. On top of that, the control system handles operations and maintenance (O&M) functions, such as how to start and stop the unit, continuous monitoring for diagnostics, and when to operate the plant locally and remotely. Cybersecurity, another key component of hydropower automation, protects operations, data, and personnel. The control system should be equipped with cybersecurity software and defense-in-depth strategies to safeguard against cyberattacks.
Matthew Roberts: Emerson supports the entire power generation sector with a current spotlight on decarbonization and renewables, as noted in our recent environmental, social, and governance report, which highlights our internal and customer-focused sustainability initiatives. Hydropower currently covers just over 30 percent of renewable generation in the United States and has a tremendous role in supporting the industry’s transformation to cleaner energy and the integration of renewables into the grid. Emerson has a broad portfolio of software, technologies, and services that can monitor and control everything in a single plant or a fleet of plants, from the top enterprise level to the bottom equipment or device level. Our team has over 1,000 cumulative years of expertise and has extensive experience in engineering and services supporting the hydro market. Hydropower facilities were some of the first power sources to come onto the grid. Most hydro facilities were built from around 1900 through the 1970s and 1980s and still operate using a lot of the original equipment. As these facilities are modernized to extend their operating life, much of our focus is on replacing existing legacy control systems with modern, automated, computer-based controls and software solutions. But the focus doesn’t end there, since plants can be further digitally transformed with other features, such as enhanced control strategies, advanced diagnostics, remote operation capability, and cybersecurity solutions. Modernization increases efficiency, operating flexibility, and security and improves performance.
Matthew Roberts: Yes; the earliest systems were purely mechanical. They would have a mechanical governor with
Emerson's team of experts, equipped with more than 1,000 cumulative years of experience, combined with its vast inventory of spare parts, enables its customers to confidently maintain safe and reliable operations by keeping their legacy governors operating like new.
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Hydro Leader: You referred to implementing computerbased controls. Were the older systems mechanical?
Hydro Leader: What exactly does a control system control?
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Hydro Leader: What does the retrofit of existing facilities, control systems, and equipment involve?
Hydro Leader: Would you give an example of a control system retrofit you’ve been involved in?
Hydro Leader: In addition to retrofits, does Emerson provide services for new-build hydro facilities or pumped storage facilities? Matthew Roberts: Absolutely. In a lot of ways, the work is similar. You’re customizing a solution by starting with a set of operational requirements and establishing an integrated digital foundation platform that interfaces with equipment provided by original equipment manufacturers or engineering, procurement, and construction firms.
an electrical connection to spinning equipment such as flyballs, which measure the speed at which turbines are spinning, and would then use that information to maintain the power output of the generator. Relay logic added to the mechanical governor would have handled the control of other plant operations. There have been advances over the years from early analog control to early digital control systems. Now, we use a much more open and integrated platform in which we can do a lot with software, such as using whitespace controls that allow us to layer on advanced applications and more high-performance operations.
EMERSON.OFCOURTESYPHOTOS
Hydro Leader: Would you tell us about the importance of pumped storage hydropower?
Emerson’s annual governor school and focus workshops provide customers the opportunity to refresh skills or learn new strategies through intensive hands-on and classroom instruction, empowering plants to engage in self-service before reaching out for additional assistance.
Matthew Roberts: When it comes to retrofit projects, one size does not fit all. The solution is tailored to meet the customer’s specific requirements. Hydro units are some of the oldest sources of generation on the grid, and a tremendous variety of equipment has been installed and operated over the past 100 plus years. At the simplest level, you may replace a piece of control equipment with a more modern piece. For example, you can replace a mechanical computer of the type I mentioned before while still retaining the mechanical power system that operates the gates to control the flow of water. However, if the hydraulic power equipment is aging or obsolete or is causing environmental concerns, it can be replaced as well. An O&M repair might involve replacing just one piece of failing equipment, but if you’re trying to improve operational performance by implementing new modes or providing remote capability, you may need to take a broader view of the systems controlling an entire plant or a fleet of units on a river. That may require setting up an integrated platform that connects all the automation assets and aggregates the data to provide greater visibility into operations. There really is no one single type of approach. It depends on what your objectives are.
Matthew Roberts: We have implemented thousands of solutions worldwide, from simple repairs to fleetwide modernizations. I’ll start with an O&M repair scenario. We were working with a utility in Europe that was pursuing options for replacing some obsolete 1990s-vintage control systems, several of which were rare and had a relatively small installed base. While the utility was going through the evaluation process, the control system had an unexpected failure. Since our group had experience replacing this type of equipment, we were able to return the utility to service in just a few weeks. That is significantly faster than the usual 6 months to a year that these types of projects require. The expertise of our team enabled us to quickly solve the problem, helping to restore the balanced river flow that was essential for preserving the health of the surrounding ecosystem. That’s a perfect example of how we apply our experience to solve our customers’ problems. We also have experience providing more comprehensive solutions. We are currently working with a utility in North America that wants a cohesive control solution across its entire hydro fleet of 100 units and 25 plants with a capacity of about 2.5 gigawatts of power. The goal is to extend the equipment life, enable remote operation, and apply predictive analytics to reduce O&M costs. Additionally, the utility wants to take advantage of advanced dispatch and joint load control features that will enable it to operate its fleet of units as a cohesive batch and thereby optimize reservoir levels, flow, and unit operations. This will be a multiyear project. As you can see, we provide solutions for everything from the “Can you help me?” phone call in the middle of the night to a 10 to 20 year plan and all sorts of scenarios in between.
Hydro Leader: We hear a lot about how the drought and reduced water flow on the Colorado River are significantly affecting power generation. Would the new control systems you’re installing be able to increase power generation on a fixed amount of water or reduce the amount of water required?
Matthew Roberts: Every utility has different requirements and operating characteristics, but absolutely, through more flexible controls, you can make the most of that limited resource. We’re seeing exactly that: Drought conditions are forcing utilities to be smarter with their resources through tighter dispatching, better monitoring of flows and reservoir levels, and more optimized balancing between the various units that share the water in a watershed.
Hydro Leader: What future trends do you see affecting your work, and what are some of the capabilities your technology will aim at in the future?
Matthew Roberts: Hydro plants are maturing as the power grid is changing, and keeping pace with the industry’s transition to net zero is a challenge. Transmission operators are being forced to operate their units differently than they were originally designed to in response to the increase of renewable sources, such as wind and solar; the use of energy storage; and the reduction of inertia as coal plants come offline. That, in conjunction with the age of the hydro fleet and the net necessity to reinvest for life extension, presents a great opportunity to install modern, digital automation software and technologies that can help optimize operations and maintain grid stability. That’s exactly what we’re hearing from our customers. They need comprehensive, integrated solutions that focus on increasing operational flexibility, aggregating and contextualizing data, and providing greater visibility into operations to enhance decisionmaking.
A single, unified automation platform provides full operational visibility of an individual plant or an entire fleet of hydropower producers, resulting in increased performance, improved efficiency, and reduced costs.
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Matthew Roberts: Pumped storage is an important part of hydropower and is a vital solution for grid reliability because it acts like a large battery that can store energy and deploy it when needed. With the increase in unpredictable renewable generation, we’re seeing a rise in the demand for the flexibility provided by pumped storage plants. What was once baseload operation is now becoming a more variable load as other sorts of generation are integrated into the grid. Hydro really has a big contribution to make here because it is well situated to modulate and adjust, especially after some of the operational upgrades that we talked about. You’re getting much more granular control of optimizing equipment and process operations to meet dispatch demands.
Matthew Roberts is the director of renewable projects at Emerson. He can be contacted at matthew.j.roberts@emerson.com or via LinkedIn at matt-roberts-914828b6/www.linkedin.com/in/.
Smarter and more precise controls provide our customers with the ability to adapt to industry changes. H
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Infrastructure Resiliency Through Risk Management /2023-technical-program/https://www.ussdams.org/conferences-workshops 2023 Conference Call for Abstracts 2022 Education Calendar2022 Education Calendar USSD continues to o er top level education through workshops, webinars, and annual conferences. Webinars and workshops are o ered live, and many are available on-demand through USSD’s Learning Center (https://training.ussdams.org). These high-level learning opportunities address the needs for all sectors of the industry including consultants, contractors, dam owners, academia, etc. Scheduled for the second quarter and beyond are the following trainings. JULY 21 Investigation of the Feijão Tailings Dam Failure Brumadinho,near Brazil AUGUST 18 Underwater Inspection SEPTEMBER 15 Developments in Seismic UnitedCentralAssessmentHazardintheandEasternStates NOVEMBER 17 Team Dynamics DECEMBER 15 Dam Decommissioning Webinars Our On Demand Library is always open. Access the Learning Center and filter by “On Demand” On Demand FALL WORKSHOP SERIES October 4-6, 2022 Denver, CO Workshops Questions about upcoming trainings or group training opportunities? Reach out to USSD’s Education and Professional Development Director Laura Wright at laura@ussdams.org The U.S. Society on Dams is the U.S. National Committee of ICOLD Empower professionals to advance sustainable benefits of dams and levees for society. MISSION A world where all dams and levees are safe and valued by the communities they serve. VISION ADVERTISEMENT
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MAVELOFCOURTESYPHOTOS
Czech Republic–based Mavel has designed and manufactured turbines and related equipment for hydroelectric power projects around the world, both large and small, but its origins lie in the development of low-head projects, which remain a specialty. In a recent project in Tass, Hungary, Mavel developed a power generation and flood-control facility on a channel of the Danube River that can run water forward or, when needed, pump it backward. In this interview, Mavel Cofounder and Co-owner Jan Šíp tells us more about the project and how it might provide a model for similar projects in North America.
The Tass hydroelectric facility, under construction (left) and complete (right).
The top management of METAZ decided to establish a new microturbine department under the internal research and development (R&D) program, and I became one of its heads, responsible for the development and design of microturbines. To improve my knowledge and professional qualifications, I pursued PhD studies at CTU, where I met Professor Cihak, who surrounded himself with enthusiastic students interested in hydro machines. Our cooperation led to the establishment of Mavel as a private entity just after the Velvet Revolution in 1990, so I am one of the company’s cofounders. Since then, I have been one of the co-owners of the company and have been responsible for R&D and the manufacturing of our products.
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Mavel’s New Low-Head Hydropower and Flood Control Project in Tass, Hungary
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
Jan Šíp: After my studies in the faculty of civil engineering at the Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague, where I earned my master’s degree, I joined the state-owned company METAZ and started working in the design department. I was responsible for the design and statics of steel and concrete structures. The energy crisis in the former Soviet Union countries was at its peak at the time. The government implemented a program under which each company had to spend at least 1 percent of its turnover to help find a solution for the crisis.
Hydro Leader: Please briefly introduce Mavel as a company and give us a sense of the scale of its operations in Europe and the world. Jan Šíp: Mavel was established in 1990 as a designmanufacturing company producing mainly low-head turbines and targeting the market within 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of its headquarters in Benešov, Czech Republic. We have continued the tradition of Czech hydro engineering, which was practically discontinued after World War II because of the transition to a centrally planned economy and the shift to coal-fired power. Thus, in 1990, we took a chance on the niche in the market and offered equipment for low-head projects. Gradually, as our company expanded, we needed more financial resources to finance the company’s growth. In 1995, we met U.S. strategic investors who joined Mavel and are still part of the company. The combination of Czech technological know-how and U.S. investment and knowledge of the market economy allowed Mavel to gradually grow from a local supplier to a leading global partner in the hydro business, producing turbines ranging in power from 5 kilowatts (kW) to 30 megawatts (MW). So far, we have manufactured 550 turbines with an installed power of 650 MW and supplied them to 46 countries on 5 continents. We were able to achieve these results due in part to the acquisition of CKD Turbotechnics, a part of the globally renowned company Českomoravská Kolben-Daněk, or CKD. This contributed to the expansion of our know-how and our cumulative experience in the design, production, assembly, and commissioning of hydro technology.
Hydro Leader: Please give us some information about Mavel’s experience working with low-head projects.
Jan Šíp: Low-head turbines did not historically allow for high returns on investment, as they required very specific
Hydro Leader: Why were custom-built turbines required for the Tass project? How did Mavel go about designing and building them?
Jan Šíp: Tests and measurements at the site were able to prove to the owner’s full satisfaction that all the technology met the guaranteed and required parameters in all modes. Moreover, the actual measured parameters were higher than the guaranteed and required ones. At the Tass project, the installed power is 400 kW per unit.
Hydro Leader: Is there anything you would like to add?
Jan Šíp: After 39 years working in the hydro industry, I am happy to see a renaissance in small hydro. I think that the expansion of small hydro can offer a qualitative advance in hydro generation, not just a quantitative advance. Specifically, it will allow for the development of local sources of energy with no dependence on the grid. In combination with solar and wind resources, our technology can contribute to the accumulation of a large volume of energy that can be quickly and flexibly used when needed and can also help develop independent sources of energy. Hydro could be an appropriate solution for developing countries that need to make agricultural production and industrialization more effective, for remote areas that lack of access to the grid, for existing weirs with no current energy production but with the potential for it, and for the storage of power on both a small and a large scale to help match production with demand.
Hydro Leader: What results have the owners and operators of the Tass project seen from the new turbines? How much power does the facility generate?
Hydro Leader: Does the Tass project provide a model for other low-head projects?
Jan Šíp: Yes. This model can be applied on middle- and lowhead rivers in flood areas as well as on irrigation channels.
Mavel’s ability to provide customized and optimized solutions, using proven proprietary designs, allows the company to be part of the hydro solution, particularly for refurbishments and upgrades and for the addition of power to existing weirs. In the Americas, I see great potential in these areas to increase hydro’s share of the energy market. Mavel has built extensive experience in these two areas from its projects in Europe and other parts of the world. Our experience has allowed us to develop optimized solutions for projects in the United States, including a 1.2 MW irrigation project in Idaho, a 60 MW refurbishment project in Georgia, and a 200 kW installation on an existing weir in Massachusetts. We hope to have the opportunity to provide a low-head pump turbine concept similar to the one we developed at Tass for a site in North America. H
Hydro Leader: What was the major challenge in constructing the Tass, Hungary, facility? Jan Šíp: The requirement of the owner of the project was to optimize the existing branch alongside the Danube River for groundwater regulation and protection against local flooding. We had to design turbines that could operate at a very low head and that could essentially operate as a pumped storage plant—that is, in turbine mode as well as in reversible pump mode. Besides that, the customer requested that the turbines be able to operate in what is called energyfree mode—in other words, allowing water drainage without energy production.
Jan Šíp: The head varies from 3 to 10 meters (9.8–32.8 feet) in both directions—in turbine mode and in reversible pump mode.
Jan Šíp: The idea of water regulation in a channel has existed for 60 years, but no one had really developed an effective project of this type because of the absence of a technical design. Mavel was able to offer a technical solution that met all the owner’s and engineer’s requirements. Once the offer and our design concept were accepted, we started working on the design of the turbines and the other equipment and presented a model of the technical solution, which was then approved. The entire design and production process took approximately 18 months.
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Hydro Leader: What is the head at this dam?
Jan Šíp is a cofounder and co-owner of Mavel. For more about Mavel, visit mavel.cz and customized solutions. In other words, it was impossible to take a simple approach similar to the rapid production of large machines. Knowing that, Mavel was able to help its customers to find a way to make low-head projects more economically feasible and cost effective. Because of its vast experience in the hydro industry and its broad portfolio of products and customized technological solutions, Mavel is able to meet customers’ requirements not only on new projects but also on rehabilitations. Mavel technology has come to be valued and sought after for its high quality, reliable operations, and long lifespan, which are all results of the combination of our knowledge, experience, enthusiasm, flexibility, R&D work, and consistent vision.
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ItineraryIsrael Water Education and Please save the date for the following scheduled tour, sponsored by Irrigation Leader, Municipal Water Leader, and Hydro Leader magazines and operated by Imagine Tours and Travel, LLC.
Drive to the Mount of Olives for a beautiful view over the Old City of Jerusalem, then visit the City of David, including the Hezekiah Tunnel. Brave the wet side or opt for the dry as you walk to the Pool of Siloam. Drive on to Armon Hanatziv to see ancient tunnels that brings water from Solomon’s Pool to the Temple. Enter the Old City to see the Western Wall, tunnels, Pool of Bethesda, and the Roman Cardo with its old wells. There will be an option to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher followed by dinner and overnight stay in Jerusalem.
Arrive at Ben Gurion Airport. Following passport validation, a representative will assist with transport to Leonardo Plaza Netanya for dinner and overnight stay.
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Travel to the Caesarea National Park to see the Roman aqueduct and water cistern, proceed to Kibbutz Magal, then visit the Netafim irrigation factory and the Meggido National Park’s ancient water system. Enjoy dinner and overnight stay in Tiberias, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Drive north to view the two main sources of the Jordan River, the Dan and Banias Rivers, then on to Mt. Bental to see the Golan Heights, the Syrian border, and Mt. Hermon. Enjoy a winery tour and tasting, then return to Tiberias for dinner and overnight stay. Begin the day at the National Water Carrier, the system that supplies water to vast regions of the country, then travel to Mt. Arbel for an amazing view of the Sea of Galilee. Drive to Mt. Gilboa and Kibbutz Maale Gilboa, where the Gilboa Pumped Storage Hydroelectric Poser Project is located. Proceed to Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu for an agriculture bio tour. Drive via the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert to Jerusalem for dinner and overnight stay.
Visit the Israel Museum, which houses the Shrine of the Book, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a miniature model of Jerusalem from the First Temple period. Drive to Sataf Spring in the Judean Hills to see how the citizens of the city get a few acres to grow their own vegetables and fruits while using an ancient irrigation system that leads water between terraces. Continue on to the Beit Zait Water Reservoir and Dam, followed by dinner and overnight stay in Jerusalem.
Trade Tour Preview, Nov. 30–Dec. 10, 2022
7 Drive to the Einot Zukim Nature Reserve, which features an oasis of freshwater springs, vegetation, and animal life. Then, in the desert next to the Dead Sea, experience the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve, where kibbutz members pump water for their mineral water factory. Continue on to the world heritage site of Masada, where participants can walk the snake trail by foot or ascend via cable car to see King Herod’s fortress, an ancient synagogue, a Byzantine church, and a water cistern. Proceed to Ein Bokek for dinner and overnight stay. 9 8 Travel through the Arava Desert Valley to the Yair Research and Development Agriculture Center and Center for Modern Desert Farming. Tour greenhouses and the agricultural inventions section, which focuses on the challenges of desert soil and climate. Continue to the ecological Kibbutz of Lotan to see how sandy soil is transformed to yield lush gardens and to hear about organic and permaculture tips that have helped the Center for Creative Ecology treat waste, raise healthy food, and save energy. Proceed to Eliat for a possible desalination facility tour, followed by dinner and overnight stay in the city.
• entrance fees for all visits and tours
• eight nights of hotel accommodation
Services Included
• luxury air-conditioned coach
• meeting and assistance at Ben Gurion Airport on arrival
6
• licensed English-speaking guide for all transfers and sightseeing days
• breakfasts and dinners at hotels and farewell dinner at local restaurant $4,797.00 per attendee from Washington Dulles International $4,409.00 per attendee without airfare
Irrigation Leader, Municipal Water Leader, and Hydro Leader magazines are published by Water Strategies LLC. Participants are strongly recommended to separately secure comprehensive traveler's insurance.
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• transfer to/from Ben Gurion Airport
Early bird discount of $50 for reservations made by May 15, 2022, with a $500 deposit. All posted prices, services, and destinations are subject to the terms and conditions of a participant agreement.
Drive via the Ramon Crater to the Negev Desert Research and Development Center near Ashalim, which specializes in using salty water for agriculture. Proceed to Kibbutz Hatzerim near Beer Sheva, which is the southern branch of the Netafim Irrigation Factory. Continue to a water desalination facility in Ashkelon or Ashdod on the Mediterranean Sea. Enjoy a farewell dinner in Jaffa and then drive to Ben Gurion Airport for a night flight home.
Hydro Leader: How many employees does the company have?
Rob Adams: Western Machine was founded in 1985 with a focus on repairing rolls and other critical equipment for the pulp and paper industry. Leveraging that experience, the company has expanded into other heavy industries, such as marine, wind, and hydro. It is great to start with a company that has a solid reputation of doing quality work, not just for pulp and paper but also for the renewable sector. We are currently an original equipment manufacturer–approved wind turbine main shaft repair facility for North America. We provide metallization and repairs of various wind turbine brands. We are expanding our machining capabilities for hydro as well. We are also fully equipped to repair, refurbish, and manufacture hydro components and parts. A significant part of my role is growing Western Machine’s hydro business in the Pacific Northwest. We are the primary machine shop for various hydro consulting firms and contractors. These companies fit Western Machine’s business model, capabilities, expertise, and work ethic. Another important service that Western Machine offers is trucking. We can take away the stress of having to arrange freight from the customer. Using special fixtures, we can carefully move equipment up and down the West Coast.
Western Machine Works: Specialized Part Fabrication for the Hydro Industry
Rob Adams: I have a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering and gained experience in the industry by working on gas and steam turbines for several utilities. I started in the nuclear field, working as a steam and gas turbine engineer for Portland General Electric. In that role, I worked at three different nuclear plants, primarily doing steam turbine repairs; I built that expertise for about 12 years. Then, I moved over to hydro, still working for Portland General Electric and worked as a hydro maintenance engineer for 12 years. More recently, I took a position with Western Machine Works and have worked with the company for about a year and a half.
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about Western Machine Works.
Western Machine Works is a Pacific Northwest machine shop that works in the paper, industrial, marine, wind generation, and hydropower markets and specializes in fabricating nonstandard and difficult-to-locate parts. As utilities begin to increase the tempo of their repairs after the COVID 19 pandemic, Western Machine is engaging in more and more hydrorelated work. Hydro Sales Engineer Rob Adams tells us more.
WORKS.MACHINEWESTERNOFCOURTESYPHOTOS
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
A bushing in a Kaplan turbine hub is machined in Western Machine’s shop.
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Rob Adams: Yes; a lot of the utilities in the Northwest go through the experience of being unable to get parts and having to make them. Western Machine has experience manufacturing parts, with or without the original equipment manufacturers’ drawings. Another great attribute Western Machine has is an engineering staff that is able to reverse-engineer components and generate CAD manufacturing prints. This is a valuable service given the variety of older hydro equipment with limited print availability. We are currently working on new trunnions for a Northwest utility. A local foundry will be providing the castings, and Western Machine will install the composite bushings and will precision-machine all the parts to the final dimensions.
Rob Adams: Western Machine is looking at expanding our capacity. As we continue to diversify our services into other industries, we are exploring a variety of options to add new equipment and optimize our production flow. The ownership and management team support the financial requirements of growth and recently approved the purchase of a large lathe and the relocation of several key pieces of equipment in our shop to add capacity and increase efficiency. Machine shops like Western have a bright future with hydro. Utilities have deferred repair and refurbishing projects during the pandemic. Now, we are seeing an increase in requests for quotes and invitations to bid. Western Machine is currently working on several quotes and proposals for various utilities and contractor partners. H Rob Adams is a hydro sales engineer at Western Machine Works. He can be contacted at roba@westernmachine.com or (503) 286 7791.
Hydro Leader: Given that there are a lot of hydro facilities that date back 100 years or more, is there a fairly large market for fabricating parts that are not otherwise available?
Rob Adams: That is correct. Western Machine is experienced in fabricating parts from drawings for old hydro units that you cannot get parts for anymore. We recently worked on a 1 MW Kaplan turbine whose gate-shift ring was cracked. Western Machine was able to fabricate a new ring, and everything set correctly. We did that in record time—in just a couple of months.
Rob Adams: We have about 48 employees. Something distinctive about Western Machine is that we’re one of the only machine shops in the Pacific Northwest that has a swing shift. With consecutive shifts, we can maintain momentum on critical-path projects, reducing customer downtime.
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Hydro Leader: Would you tell us about one of your recent hydro-related projects? Rob Adams: A public utility in the Pacific Northwest needed to rebuild a Kaplan turbine of about 5 megawatts (MW). The Kaplan turbine hub came to us through one of our hydro contractor partners. Our team manufactured new bronze bushings, trunnion followers, and coupling bolts. The turbine head, which had been manufactured overseas, had concentricity issues. In order to make sure that everything lined up, we performed additional line boring to the bushing bores. We also installed a new mud ring that required rolling to the contour of the runner hub. We completed the project, sandblasted it, painted it, and had it ready to install in about 3 weeks, which meant that the utility did not need to extend its outage window. Here’s another example of Western Machine’s hydrorelated work. When I was with Portland General Electric, we had a 5 MW 1920s-vintage turbine shaft that had broken in half because of fatigue failure. Fortunately, we had an older forging that had been purchased a long time ago as a spare shaft. Western Machine actually took the 1920s-era drawing, used it to make a new computer-aided design (CAD) drawing, and machined a shaft from our spare. This resulted in the correct fit-up, including the thrust bearing and turbine runners. Western Machine had to make some modifications to ensure that the .040 inch thrust clearance was adequate. Western Machine removed about 4 tons of material from that spare shaft to get everything to fit correctly. We dynamic-balanced the runner-shaft assembly, and it was one of the smoothest startups I’ve ever been involved with. When we did our testing for vibration, it was it was less than a mil and a half. I highly recommend that utilities dynamic-balance component assemblies if possible.
Hydro Leader: Has personnel recruitment been an issue for the company? Rob Adams: Absolutely. Part of the challenge for Western Machine is that the repair business lends itself to unique manual machines that require skilled operators. To create employment opportunities, Western Machine has established relationships with local community colleges and trade schools and hosted job fairs, mentorships, and apprenticeships. On the positive side, the retention rate of our work force is high because of our great working conditions, camaraderie, and the spirit to do whatever it takes to meet our customers’ demands.
Hydro Leader: What is your vision for the future?
Hydro Leader: It sounds like one of Western Machines’ specialties is creating parts for nonstandard or older machines.
NWHA FALL HYDRO CAMP S e l e c t i o n o f t o p i c s f o c u s i n g o n n a t u r a l r e s o u r c e s , t r i b a l r e l a t i o n s , l e g a l & r e g u l a t o r y , a n d w a t e r m a n a g e m e n t T o u r o f T a c o m a P o w e r ' s C u s h m a n F i s h F a c i l i t i e s N e t w o r k i n g w i t h i n d u s t r y c o l l e a g u e s R e g i o n a l f o c u s o n i s s u e s i m p o r t a n t t o h y d r o p o w e r p r a c t i t i o n e r s S E P T E M B E R 1 3 - 1 5 , 2 0 2 2 T A C O M A , W A S H I N G T O N J O I N U S w w w N W H Y D R O O R G T A L K W I T H U S I N F O @ N W H Y D R O . O R G REGISTER TO ATTEND NOW www.nwhydro.org L O C A T I O N H o t e l M u r a n o H O S T U T I L I T Y T a c o m a P o w e r ADVERTISEMENT
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Duncan White of InspectionsforAdvancedBorescopes:ViewTechDevicesRemoteVisual
A ViewTech borescope.
Duncan White: We market our products on the internet and sell primarily over the phone. We also do up to 25 trade shows a year. We let our customers demo the borescopes before they buy. Our expert sales consultants start by having a detailed conversation with the customer about their application. We can then ship the product and let the customer use it on site with the company’s own equipment. During that process, we talk to the customer and provide guidance about how to use the borescope. We find that in almost every case, once customers get the borescope into their hands, they realize that it’s not too difficult to use. Our business model is not set up for us to be there in person, though. We don’t offer the service of doing a borescope inspection; we only provide the equipment. We are able to keep a good inventory, so when a product is ordered, we can usually ship it out right away. If you order a borescope from some other companies, you have to wait for it to be made.
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about ViewTech Borescopes.
Duncan White: I am the director of sales and marketing at ViewTech Borescopes. I have been here for about 10 years. My background is in online marketing. Before coming here, I worked as the director of client services, a sales role, at an internet marketing company.
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
BORESCOPES.VIEWTECHOFCOURTESYPHOTOS
Michigan-based ViewTech Borescopes is a leader in remote visual inspection. Its borescopes have a manipulatable probe and video technology that allows facility managers to create an archive of photos and videos to inform decisions about troubleshooting and preventive maintenance. In this interview, ViewTech’s director of sales and marketing, Duncan White, tells us about the company’s technology and its demo-before-you-buy sales philosophy.
Duncan White: We’re a small company of about 10 people based in Traverse City, Michigan. We are the exclusive distributor in the United States and Canada of ViewTech Borescopes for commercial and industrial applications. A borescope is a small inspection camera that can go inside places you can’t reach with your eyes. The technology is related to that used in medical endoscopes. The difference is that the borescope needs to be durable enough to work in industrial settings. With many types of inspection cameras, you can put the camera in, but you can’t move it around. We distribute a class of borescopes called articulating video borescopes, which means that their ends can be moved around to get a better view of the area that you’re inspecting.
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Hydro Leader: How do potential customers learn about your products?
Hydro Leader: What are some of the municipal and hydro uses of these devices?
Duncan White: Borescopes are often used to inspect piping, and sometimes that piping is full of water. On the hydro side, the borescope can inspect a turbine engine, for example. Our handheld units have a maximum probe length of about 26 feet. Whereas sewer cameras can reach hundreds of yards, potentially even miles, our borescopes have a shorter reach, but they can take pictures. We’re trying to meet the need for a camera that can move around and take pictures and videos. Those images can be archived and used to inform decisions
Hydro Leader: Does the software require routine or periodic updates? Duncan White: No software updates are required. All the processing is done by the little computer in the base unit of the borescope. You save your pictures and videos to an SD card. Later, you can connect the borescope to your computer via USB cable or just pop the SD card out.
Water treatment plant customers are not going to be exposing the borescope to anything too rugged. In general, they’re working in a more forgiving environment with more ample spaces, which allows them to use the larger 6 millimeter borescope, and water, which won’t wear the borescope out.
Hydro Leader: What is the company’s vision for the future?
hydroleadermagazine.com about things like preventive maintenance, flawed attachments, and troubleshooting. Our borescopes can focus amazingly clearly at just a centimeter or even a few millimeters from a target. They range in diameter from 2.2 to 6 millimeters.
Hydro Leader: Can the borescope propel itself, or does the user have to move it?
Hydro Leader: What is the typical lifespan of one of these devices? Duncan White: The typical lifespan is 10 years. Some devices last even longer. The borescope might need a couple of repairs in that lifespan, depending on the industry. Some applications are much harsher on borescopes than others— for instance, some inspections require the borescope to move past sharp metal edges that can damage it. Passageways inside a casted chunk of metal likely have sharp metal corners. You’ve got to make sure the passageways are clear and that the company that made them conducts routine repair and maintenance. Although our product is durable, it will eventually wear out. A new insertion tube can be put on, and that will essentially restore the borescope to a like-new state. We perform the repairs and provide customers with a loaner borescope to use until the repairs are complete.
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Duncan White: The industry is headed toward higher image quality, which means you’ll be able to take more detailed pictures. It’s a little bit like the Hubble telescope and the Webb telescope. You could do a tremendous amount of science with the Hubble images, but you could do even more science with the Webb. With the next wave of borescopes, you’ll have higher-quality images, and you’ll be able to edit the photos and images right in the device itself. You’ll have a Wi-Fi connection; the ability to annotate; and shareability, so that you can complete your borescope inspection and report the results right from the device. H Duncan White is the director of sales and marketing at ViewTech Borescopes. He can be contacted at dwhite@viewtech.com
An inspection image from a West Coast customer in the hydropower industry that uses the ViewTech VJ-3 6.0mm X 1.5m articulating video borescope for natural gas engines, valves, cylinder heads, and more.
Duncan White: The user has to push the scope where it needs to go. The last 2 inches or so of the borescope contain the camera and the lighting. That section is controlled by a thumb-operated joystick. The smallest-diameter scope has what we call two-way articulation: You can move it 180 degrees to the left and 180 to the right, but you can’t swing it all the way around. Every other borescope we offer has what we call 360 degree articulation. We have borescopes with 360 degree articulation and a forwardfacing camera. We also have a special series called dual cameras, which have a camera mounted 90 degrees on the side. With the dual camera borescope, it’s easy to quickly switch to the side view, and you can take pictures and videos with both the forward and side cameras. That gives you a more complete inspection.
Hydro Leader: What would be the advantage of having a larger borescope? Duncan White: That is a common question. The larger borescope is more durable and costs less. A larger-diameter borescope can fit more advanced cameras, so it can produce higher-quality images. When you’re inside a tiny space that requires a borescope that is 3 millimeters in diameter or smaller, you don’t need to be far away to take a picture. At the other extreme, some of our 6 millimeter borescopes, which are called far-focused borescopes, are tremendously bright, and within certain limits, they can light up a cavity and let you take pictures up to a foot from your target.
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Hydro Leader: Please tell us how you started your hydropower engineering career. Kamal Gautam: I started my career in 1993 with the Butwal Power Company (BPC), a pioneering hydropower developer in Nepal. The BPC was established in 1966 by a visionary Norwegian engineer, Mr. Odd Hoftun, as part of his work with the United Mission to Nepal. At the time I joined BPC, Nepal was experiencing several hours of blackouts every day due to a shortage of electricity supply, and the Nepalese government had just introduced the 1992 Electricity Act, opening business opportunities for independent power producers (IPP) to build, own, operate, and transfer (BOOT) hydropower plants. As a design engineer, I was closely involved in the design and engineering of the 60-megawatt (MW) Khimti I Hydropower Project. Statkraft of Norway and BPC developed the project under a BOOT agreement by setting up a special-purpose company called Himal PowerAlthoughLimited.the Khimti project was a medium-sized project by its capacity, it pioneered private-sector investment in hydropower through a power purchase agreement with the Nepal Electricity Authority, the national utility. Multilateral private-sector investors, including the International Finance Corporation and the Asian Development Bank, were the lenders for the project. The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation offered grants to support various social and environmental mitigation programs as part of the project funding. For me, as a young engineer, being part of this flagship project was an exciting opportunity. After 3 years of design office assignments, I was asked to go to the construction site and manage construction contracts as the resident engineer, representing the developer. I spent the following 4 years at the construction site, working with the construction companies until the power plant was fully commissioned and interconnected with the Nepalese national grid.
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The Khimti project was a complex project from an engineering point of view, with more than 11 kilometers (nearly 7 miles) of tunneling and an underground powerhouse with five Pelton units with horizontal shafts under a design head of 660 meters (2,165 feet). It also included a large desander basin designed to exclude sediment from the Khimti River before the water entered the headrace tunnel. Most of the headrace tunnel and headworks construction was managed without an access road. Construction materials were primarily transported by mules and human laborers. Not only were there technical and logistical challenges, but there were also social and political challenges. The project was in an underprivileged community. As part of the project, new roads were built, villages were electrified, and social infrastructure such as schools and health centers were improved or built. I volunteered to spearhead the establishment and management of the Khimti Project
Kamal Gautam is the founder of the Khimti Forum, a virtual network of professionals with a common interest in infrastructure, energy, environment, and economics. In his day job, he is the director of engineering for rPlus Hydro, a pumped storage hydro project development company. He has years of experience in hydropower engineering, spanning Nepal, the United States, Pakistan, Uganda, Laos, and other locations around the world. In this interview, Mr. Gautam tells us more about the many accomplishments of his hydro career, the development of the Khimti Forum, and his current role in pumped storage development.
Kamal Gautam of rPlus Hydro: Connecting the Global Hydro Community Through the Khimti Forum
The Khimti I Hydropower Project's powerhouse area on the left bank of Tamakoshi River, Kirne, Dolakha, Nepal.
Kamal Gautam: After the Khimti Project was commissioned in 2000, I joined a 2 year postgraduate degree program in hydropower and dam engineering at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands. Upon completing the program, I started working for a Norwegian engineering firm, NORPLAN, at the Melamchi Water Diversion Scheme, a megaproject designed to bring drinking water into Kathmandu, Nepal, through a 27 kilometer (16.7 mile) tunnel drilled through the mountains. I didn’t stay too long in that job, because I wanted to pursue my PhD in engineering. Meanwhile, the project itself was not progressing well due to political instability and an ongoing civil war in the country. In 2004, together with my family, I moved to the United States and began a PhD program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where I spent the next 5 years. In 2009, I joined Mead & Hunt, an engineering consulting firm headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. There, I took a role as a project engineer, investigating the feasibility of adding a hydropower facility to an existing nonpowered dam on the Mississippi River.
Kamal Gautam: Before the COVID 19 pandemic, I used to travel for my projects and meet people. Once the lockdown started, I was pretty much confined to my house. I needed to figure out a way to connect with my friends, colleagues, and professional networks. I started a small group, primarily composed of the folks that I knew from the Khimti Project, who now live and work in different parts of the world, and in May 2020, I scheduled a Zoom call with about 10 people. We decided to provide a structure to upcoming gatherings by including a professional talk on a preselected topic. Everyone in the group was interested to learn how the Khimti Hydropower Project had performed over the past 20 years, so we agreed to make the topic for the next discussion “Operational challenges and success stories of the Khimti Project.” It was led by Mr. Ishwar Deshar, who had known the plant since its commissioning time and is now the plant manager.
Hydro Leader: Would you please tell us about your international work experience?
After a few monthly meetings, the Khimti Forum gained momentum through word of mouth and gradually transformed into a network of like-minded professionals regardless of affiliation, profession, or location. Now, it feels like a true global network. Our mission is to facilitate knowledge sharing and the exchange of project experience between professionals. I believe this contributes to an openaccess knowledge base that can promote better planning and execution of economically affordable and environmentally sustainable projects. The forum’s umbrella theme is “Infrastructure, Energy, Environment, and Economics,” and our speakers include both seasoned and young professionals in these disciplines from both industry and academia.
Hydro Leader: Would you tell us about your career after the Khimti Project?
hydroleadermagazine.com School, which was located in the powerhouse area and open to children of the project workers as well as children from the community. Today, it is a highly regarded high school. Today, the plant has been in operation for 22 years with remarkable reliability and has significantly contributed to supplying clean electricity in Nepal.
Hydro Leader: How are the monthly Khimti Forum talks organized? Kamal Gautam: Each monthly event has a theme and typically has one main speaker and sometimes a featured guest. Presentations last about 1 hour, and attendees can ask questions or make comments in a chat box. At the end of the presentation, the moderator will summarize these questions and comments and ask the speakers to respond. This will usually generate new questions, and a more direct dialogue opens among attendees and speakers. We also make an effort to introduce new attendees and special guests. The open discussion will last for another hour, often longer. This interaction between speakers and attendees is unique to our forum, and we keep receiving positive feedback about it.
Hydro Leader: How many people participate in the monthly calls today? Kamal Gautam: The size of the audience fluctuates depending upon the subject of the discussion. Normally, it ranges from 30 to 60. The most I’ve seen attending live is about 80. We meet every second Saturday of the month, starting at 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time, which is 3:00 p.m. in London, 8:00 p.m. in New Delhi, and midnight in
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Kamal Gautam: In 2011, I moved to California for a job with a company called MWH, now known as Stantec. My association with MWH provided me opportunities to familiarize myself with existing hydropower stations in Northern California. As a consulting engineer, I managed a number of refurbishment and upgrade projects for Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). I also remotely supported a project in Indonesia. Thereafter, I became more interested in international projects and accepted an offer to join the Austrian-German company ILF Consulting Engineers in 2014. That began a new stage in my career with frequent travels across the continents, particularly to Austria, Canada, Germany, Laos, Pakistan, and Uganda, working on various greenfield hydropower projects. Pakistan is a country with a lot of hydropower potential, and it is currently building several large-scale hydropower projects. Another interesting assignment I had was in 2014 in Uganda, where I was asked to audit the ongoing construction of two large-scale hydropower projects funded through bilateral cooperation with the government of China. Hydro Leader: Why and how did you start the Khimti Forum?
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Now, we are transitioning into carbon-free energy systems that go beyond conventional hydro. The challenge is how to store energy from renewable resources and then use it when it is needed the most. This requires grid-scale storage systems, and currently, pumped storage hydro offers a proven and viable technology to meet that need. Europe and China are developing a lot of pumped storage projects. Australia is currently building the flagship Snowy 2.0 pumped storage project, which is worth more than $6 billion. The United States is slow in this field, but a lot of coal-fired plants are set to retire, and in my opinion, they will be replaced by renewables plus storage plants. Most developing countries are still developing traditional hydro facilities, and it makes sense for countries like Nepal and Pakistan and many African countries because there are plenty of untapped natural resources. Occasionally, old hydro plants and dams in the United States are retired and removed. I have not come across any such cases in the developing world, particularly in those countries where I have spent time. Renewable energy is also slowly gaining momentum in those countries, mainly because of their abundant solar resources, and the technology is gradually becoming affordable. Some of these countries have also started brainstorming about whether they should start planning pumped storage plants. One of the issues often discussed in the Khimti Forum is how to tackle climate change in the planning and operation of hydropower, energy, and infrastructure projects, which is equally challenging in all countries, regardless of location.
Hydro Leader: What have been the results of the forum, other than being a source of continuing education?
Kamal Gautam: I have seen three varieties of funding for conventional hydro facilities. First, some are funded by local governments, local utilities, or IPPs with local resources. Second, some are funded by multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the German Development Bank, the French Development Agency, the Asian Development Bank, or the African Development Bank. Normally, these funds are directed through national government agencies as either soft loans or grants. Third, some are funded by international IPPs. For example, Statkraft of Norway has projects and plants in Albania, Chile, India, Nepal, Peru, and elsewhere. In countries such as Laos, Pakistan, and Uganda, there is a lot of bilateral funding from China.
Kamal Gautam: The hydropower industry in the United States and Europe is mature. These countries developed hundreds of hydropower projects during the last century that are now 50–100 years old and are still running well. During my work in Northern California, I saw plants that were built in the early 20th century and are still functional, though the equipment has significant wear and tear and their efficiency is lesser than that of new technology. The U.S. hydropower industry has a lot of opportunities for the upgrade, refurbishment, or replacement of existing facilities. The civil structures of hydropower facilities may last for 100 years or more without the need for any significant improvement. Some of the dams built early in the last century do not have fish bypass systems. Adding fish bypass structures is an opportunity to update the overall project facilities to make them comply with current environmental regulations. Adding hydropower to existing nonpowered dams is another area, but it may not always be economically attractive.
Hydro Leader: Is there a geographical focus when it comes to the projects you’re discussing?
Hydro Leader: Where are most of the participants based? Kamal Gautam: Primarily Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and occasionally South America. The timing is not convenient for participants in Australia and New Zealand.
Kamal Gautam: At the beginning, we may have appeared to be focused a bit more on Asia because the group started with a large number of professionals connected to Nepal, but we are equally interested in projects in any part of the world.
Hydro Leader: Are projects in the developing world generally large in scale?
The participation for a given event is strongly influenced by the network of the speakers themselves and the subject of their presentation.
Kamal Gautam: The monthly presentation series provides a forum for professional networking. At the end of the program, whoever has extra time may stay longer to interreact, casually network, and exchange contact details. Sometimes, people ask me to provide them with contact details of individuals or speakers with whom they would like to discuss specific questions. As an open-knowledge forum, we aim to contribute to the development of new generations of leaders in infrastructure and energy through knowledge and experience sharing. We are interested in attracting young professionals, especially women and minorities. Some of our advisors also gladly offer mentorship to our speakers, especially young professionals.
Melbourne. Although a lot of people want to participate, the meeting time is not always convenient for many.
Hydro Leader: What differences have you observed between projects in North America or Europe versus in Asia or Africa?
Hydro Leader: Are new hydro and pumped storage plants in developing countries primarily funded by national governments or by private investors?
Hydro Leader: What motivated you to join rPlus Hydro, and when did you start with the company?
Kamal Gautam: In 2018, while I was part of AECOM’s dams and hydropower team, I was introduced to Matthew Shapiro, now the CEO of rPlus Hydro, through a project related to pumped storage. He was deeply involved in identifying and promoting pumped storage projects in the United States. I found his work fascinating, because during my work with ILF Consulting Engineers, I had been exposed to the ideas and benefits that pumped storage projects could provide in the context of renewable energy. I had also visited a couple of operating pumped storage projects in Austria and learned about their benefits. I was familiar with several such projects being built or planned in Europe, and I had realized that the future of pumped storage projects would be coming to the United States soon.
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your current role at rPlus Hydro. Kamal Gautam: rPlus Hydro is a national leader in its industry with 7 gigawatts of pumped storage projects in development. We have more than 12 projects in our pumped storage hydro portfolio. As the director of engineering, my role is to create engineering strategies and direct engineering studies and investigations to prepare these projects for construction. I manage the engineering side of these projects, working internally with our cross-functional development team and externally with engineering firms such as Stantec, HDR, GEI, Mott MacDonald, SNCLavalin, and many others.
Kamal Gautam is the director of engineering at rPlus. He can be contacted at kgautam@rplusenergies.com
Around fall 2020, the position of director of engineering was open at rPlus Hydro. I expressed my interest to Matthew, and he introduced me to the rPlus leadership team. rPlus is a future-oriented company with a stellar team of professionals, and it is growing. Matthew Shapiro is the mastermind behind these projects, and Luigi Resta, the president of rPlus Hydro and the CEO of rPlus Energies, is a visionary leader who provides oxygen to these renewable energy projects and brings them to life. I was inspired by their vision, and when I was offered a role at rPlus, it did not take too long for me to decide to accept.
Kamal Gautam: I’m excited to continue working on pumped storage projects in my current role. Currently, we are completing engineering feasibility studies for three projects. One of our most advanced projects, which is now in its development stage, is the White Pine Pumped Storage Project, located near Ely, Nevada. This is a closed-loop project with static head of 2,100 feet and a capacity of 1,000 MW with 8 hours of storage capacity. The second-most-advanced project in our portfolio is the Seminoe Pumped Storage Project in Wyoming. Seminoe has a potential of 900 MW with 10 hours of storage capacity. It uses the existing Seminoe Reservoir as its lower pool. We have submitted Federal Energy Regulatory Commission draft license applications for both these projects. Currently, we are investigating subsurface geological conditions for these projects to obtain suitable design parameters and to characterize ground conditions for underground powerhouses, tunnels, shafts, and dam foundations. We aim to complete these feasibility studies midway through next year. A third project, the 500 MW Oquirrh project in Utah, is in the very early stages of engineering feasibility. We are also conducting due diligence and screening studies for nine other projects, advancing stepby-step toward full-fledged feasibility studies. We hope that the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which was just passed, will help these projects come to life even sooner. H
The Seminoe Reservoir in Wyoming has been proposed to serve as the lower reservoir of the Seminoe Pumped Storage Project being developed by rPlus.
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HYDRO.RPLUSOFCOURTESYPHOTOS
Hydro Leader: Is there anything you would like to add?
Kamal Gautam: Projects in the developing world range from mini to large scale. There are many mini or small hydro projects in Nepal and similar countries. These mini and small systems are not necessarily interconnected with the grid and may serve small communities and villages. Such projects are owned either by the community or by local entrepreneurs and private owners. Normally, large projects are owned by state-owned utilities or international IPPs, and they are interconnected with national or regional grids to supply cities and industries.
The
FERC
David Capka: The ODSP initiative began in 2012. At that time, the commission recognized that inadequate ODSPs had been cited as a contributing factor in several major dam failures and incidents, including the Taum Sauk failure. Under this initiative, FERC requires owners of high- and significant-hazard-potential projects to submit an ODSP. To assist dam owners’ compliance with this new requirement, FERC provided guidance and initiatives in various documents, including by providing information on ferc.gov and in annual letters to licensees. In 2017, it had been nearly 5 years since many owners’ ODSPs had been filed, and an external audit of their programs was due. FERC posted guidance on its website for auditors and peer reviewers to conduct these 5 year audits. These peer reviews have been useful for both the dam owners and for FERC in identifying what aspects of the ODSP were working and which aspects needed improvement.
David Capka: The ODSP is the formal, main directive on how dam safety is to function at a project. The main elements of an ODSP are as follows: 1. Dam safety policy, objectives, and expectations: This section provides a summary of the policies defined in the program; its objectives; and the expectations of the owner Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Owner’s Dam Safety Program headquarters in Washington, DC.
2.0.BYCCUNDERLICENSEDMCKNIGHT,RYANBYPHOTO
Hydro Leader: What are the main elements of an ODSP?
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about the history of FERC’s ODSP program. When was it established, and how has it changed over the years?
Established by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 2012, the Owner’s Dam Safety Program (ODSP) requires owners of certain dams and hydroelectric projects to submit detailed reports affirming that they comply with dam safety best practices. The ODSP program and the state of practice of dam safety in general have been refined by several recent rulemakings and technical advances. In this interview, David Capka, the director of the Division of Dam Safety and Inspections in FERC’s Office of Energy Projects, tells us more.
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FERC.OFCOURTESYPHOTO
Hydro Leader: What is FERC’s role in supporting dam owners in their ODSPs? David Capka: FERC’s role is to provide guidance and oversight of all dam owners’ ODSPs. As part of their annual inspections of licensed facilities, FERC staff determine whether the minimum elements of an acceptable ODSP are in place, including • the clear designation of responsibility, oversight and authority • authority over all organizational elements involved in dam safety decisions and budgeting
6. Succession planning: This section affirms that the project maintains a qualified chief dam safety engineer and qualified staff to ensure that dam safety is a critical element of a successful dam safety program.
4. Communications, coordination, reporting, and reports: This section discusses internal and external communication requirements and protocols, including those established for the chief dam safety engineer to report to senior levels of management.
7. Improvement: This section affirms that the dam safety program is periodically reviewed to ensure that it reflects the current staffing and organizational structure of the owner and incorporates the lessons learned from the ongoing implementation of the program, information gathered from dam safety inspections and from operations, changes in the state of practice in dam safety, knowledge gained from training and the study of case histories of incidents and failures, and findings from audits of the dam safety program.
8. Audits and assessments: This section outlines both internal and periodic external audits and assessments of the ODSP.
FERC also reviews the 5 year audit and requires the dam owner to develop a plan and schedule for implementing the auditor’s recommendations.
Hydro Leader: The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently came out with a document entitled Dam Safety Warning Signs Best Practices. Will FERC require or encourage its licensees to follow the FEMA document as part of their ODSPs?
• proactive and informed owner inspection and engineering evaluation programs • adequate onsite presence or remote monitoring capabilities
Hydro Leader: How did the December 2021 final rule change FERC’s existing requirements for ODSPs? What was the rationale behind that change? David Capka: The final rule updated FERC regulations to consolidate and codify the original 2012 requirement for an ODSP with the information that had subsequently been made available on the FERC website. The rule also established three general requirements for ODSPs, including the designation of either a chief dam safety engineer or a chief dam safety coordinator. It also provided an outline of the minimum contents of an ODSP. The rule codified the requirements for an annual review and update by the dam owner and for independent external audits or peer reviews every 5 years.
• access to sufficient technical resources and expertise
2. Responsibilities for dam safety: This section outlines the responsibilities for each level and organizational group, including the CEO and the board of directors. This section should also identify a chief dam safety engineer for the owner’s organization.
3. Dam safety training program: This section includes a discussion of the dam safety training provided to staff at all levels of the organization, including management, operations, maintenance, engineering consultants, and contractors, as appropriate.
5. Recordkeeping and databases: This section establishes procedures to assure the retention of critical and other relevant documents and data related to the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of the dam.
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David Capka is the director of the Division of Dam Safety and Inspections in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Office of Energy Projects. For more about the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, visit ferc.gov for its employees, consultants, and the others involved in assuring dam safety.
David Capka: FERC will note FEMA’s signage guidelines in its updated public safety guidelines, which are now under development. However, FERC will not require licensees to exclusively follow FEMA’s signage guidelines. FERC licensees will continue to have the option of following either FEMA’s signage guidelines or FERC’s 2001 signage guidelines.
Hydro Leader: What are the main trends that are influencing dam safety guidance today?
David Capka: There are several major dam safety trends at work today. FERC released new dam safety regulations, which became effective on April 11, 2022. There have been changes in practice and knowledge as a result of lessons learned from dam safety incidents and failures, such as those at Oroville, Taum Sauk, Folsom, and Edenville Dams. There has been improvement in approaches, tools, and methodologies focused on decisionmaking, such as potential failure modes analysis and risk analysis. Finally, there have been refinements and clarifications to past guidance on topics such as probable maximum floods and emergency action plans. H
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Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you originally became an engineer and a specialist in water resource planning.
ADVERTISEMENT 34 | HYDRO LEADER | September 2022 hydroleadermagazine.com MARTINEZ.ELUIDOFCOURTESYPHOTOS
Former Reclamation Commissioner Eluid Martinez: Reflections on the Development of Water Management and Conservation
HALF-CENTURY LEADERS
Commissioner Martinez: I went to school at New Mexico State University in the early 1960s and earned a degree in civil engineering. I was part of a co-op program with the New Mexico Highway Department in which engineering students would work 6 months of the year and go to school 6 months of the year. Upon graduation, the New Mexico Highway Department would employ us as junior engineers. After I graduated in 1968, I worked briefly for the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads in Northern California. Then, I came back to New Mexico to work with the Highway Department. In 1971, I was hired by Steven Reynolds, who was then serving as the New Mexico state engineer and who ultimately spent 35 years in that role. As in most Western states, the New Mexico state engineer is the chief water official in the state and is responsible for the administration of water rights and permitting. State engineers are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state senate. Shortly after going to work in the state engineer’s office as a young junior engineer, I became registered as both a professional engineer and a land surveyor in the state of New Mexico. During my tenure in the state engineer’s office, I helped the hydrographic survey section, which basically does the surveying and progression reports for the adjudication of water rights within the state. I worked in that position until 1984, when I was appointed by the state engineer as chief of the technical division, in which position I oversaw the hydrographic surveys section, the land use and water use section, the groundwater section, and the dam safety section. From 1984 through early 1990, I also served as a chief hearing examiner for the state engineer on protested water right applications. In 1990, State Engineer Reynolds passed away, and there was a nationwide search for a replacement. I was selected by the incoming governor, was appointed the state engineer of New Mexico in December 1990, and served in that capacity through the end of 1994. As the state engineer, I was responsible for the administration of water rights in the state of New Mexico. I also served as a compact commissioner on the Rio Grande Compact and other compacts between New Mexico and adjacent states with respect to rivers flowing through New Mexico into other states. I also served
Eluid Martinez is a longtime water management professional who served as the state engineer of New Mexico from 1990 to 1994 and the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation from 1995 to 2000. Over his half-century in the world of water, Commissioner Martinez has witnessed the shift in the mission of state and federal water agencies from large-scale water development and construction to water resources management and technical support. He has also seen how the rise of the environmental movement altered the concept of water conservation from maximum beneficial use of all available resources to a broader focus on the public good. In this wide-ranging interview, Mr. Martinez tells us about his experience and provides useful advice for policymakers and for young water professionals.
New Mexico State Engineer Eluid Martinez at the age of 46, circa 1991.
Hydro Leader: What were the top issues you dealt with during your career in New Mexico prior to your appointment as commissioner of Reclamation?
Commissioner Martinez: The New Mexico State Engineer, like similar offices in other western states, was initially responsible for the development of the state’s water resources. I suppose the term originates in the era of building dams, water transmission systems, and so forth— developing the state’s water resources. Shortly before I became the state engineer, there developed across the American West a focus on conserving water. Concerns arose that a lot of streams, ecosystems, and fisheries had been damaged. The development phase came to a close across the American West. By the time I became the state engineer in 1990, there had also been a shift in the administration of water rights. In the early development period, water permits were granted to put water to its maximum beneficial use, but in the 1980s and 1990s, the concept of using water wisely for conservation and public welfare began to predominate. In the old days, conservation meant putting the maximum amount of water to the maximum beneficial use. That attitude changed toward one of using water not only to drive a state’s economy, but to carefully conserve it for other purposes and uses. When I became the state engineer, I had to deal with the fact that state laws had changed and that in approving water right applications or applications for changes or new uses of water, I not only had to look at the impairment of existing water uses and whether water was available but also whether the granting of the permit would be in the public welfare and whether it would impede conservation. Those are the issues that I was dealing with in New Mexico during the early 1990s, and they are issues that are still being dealt with today across the American West.
Eluid Martinez (center) during his time as commissioner of Reclamation. as the chief administrative officer and secretary of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission and served on the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission and other commissions. In 1994, a new governor was elected. The governor was of a different political party than I am, and in January 1995, he replaced me. Around February 1995, I received a call from the White House, asking me if I’d be interested in a position in Washington, DC. In March or April 1995, President Clinton nominated me as the new commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. I was confirmed in December 1995 and served in that position until the end of President Clinton’s second term. After leaving Washington, I returned to New Mexico and opened a consulting company. Today, I still consult on water rights administration matters in the state of New Mexico.
Hydro Leader: When you moved to Washington, DC, to become the commissioner of Reclamation, what were the biggest changes in the work you were doing and the issues you were dealing with?
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Commissioner Martinez: The history of Reclamation mirrors the history of water agencies across the West, since it began as a development agency that constructed dams, large structures, and projects and later became a water management agency. The development era came to an end at the time of the environmental movement, which opposed the construction of large new structures that would impede the flow of western rivers. When President Clinton was elected, he appointed a commissioner by the name of Daniel Beard.
Dan came in with the agenda of transforming Reclamation from an engineering-oriented construction agency to a water management agency, and there was something of a backlash.
Water users and managers across the West felt that the federal government should not be deciding how water was used, by whom, and in what quantities; they felt that that should be the remit of state governments and agencies.
Hydro Leader: Aside from the dam safety work you alluded to earlier, did you do any other dam- and hydropowerfocused work at that time?
Commissioner Martinez: Not really. The state engineer’s office dealt with the inspection and monitoring of private dams, but it didn’t have any jurisdiction over federal dams. During my tenure as the state engineer, no major dams were constructed, though there probably was some rehabilitation work done on a couple of minor structures.
HALF-CENTURY LEADERS
After 2 years, President Clinton appointed me, a state engineer from the West, to take over. I started to rebuild the technical capability of the agency but shifted our focus from construction to the technical support of our projects, our infrastructure, and irrigation districts and projects across the American West. It was a period of transition.
During that era, I testified before Congress more than 40 times on water-related issues. One of the issues that arose at that time because of the environmental movement was the proposed removal of dams across the American West, including Glen Canyon Dam. I recall representing the administration at a hearing in a Senate committee on the removal of Glen Canyon Dam. I basically testified that I thought it was unrealistic. It is interesting that now, 25–30 years later, because of the drought conditions across the West, there are discussions about building dams and reservoirs again. We have gone full circle.
Commissioner Martinez: Water officials across the West and in Reclamation are now having to deal with drought and shortage conditions that I didn’t have to deal with. When I first became the state engineer of New Mexico, I was in my mid-40s. New Mexico had an aggressive water rights administration management agency. I remember going to a meeting of western engineers in Las Vegas when I’d only been the state engineer for a few months. At that meeting, I said that New Mexico was actively looking at water conservation and trying to make a limited resource go as far as it could. Off the cuff, I made the comment, “When I was driving from the airport to this meeting, I noticed that all along the roads there were sprinklers irrigating grass in the middle of the day.” That drew an interesting comment from the water officials from Nevada. They said, “What we do here in Las Vegas is none of your business.” By the end of my term as commissioner, the Las Vegas Water Authority had undertaken an aggressive water conservation program, and it is doing a good job. I relate the story to demonstrate how things change.
MARTINEZ.ELUIDOFCOURTESYPHOTOS
Commissioner Martinez: I’ve been involved in water issues now for almost 46 years. I’ve seen a lot of issues arise and go away and come back. In New Mexico, the question has cropped up every now and then of whether water management officials should be engineers. Keep in mind that these positions—state engineer and commissioner of Reclamation—were originally created as engineering positions because they were in the business of building and constructing projects. In New Mexico, there have been attempts to open the position of state engineer to individuals who do not necessarily have a degree and experience in water development and management. However, there is an immense value to practical experience. It’s easy to say, “This is the way things should be done”; it’s more difficult to actively manage a situation. I would advise those decisionmakers to listen to those who have had experience in dealing with the issues, not in hypothesizing about how the issues should be resolved. The problem today is that there are few of those individuals still around. I dealt with those issues to a certain extent 25 years ago, and I’ve seen what has occurred since then. Sometimes I feel like interjecting my views, but I don’t. I’m never asked, though, “Mr. Martinez, what would you do or what do you think?”
Commissioner Martinez with members of his staff and Spain's water leaders in Madrid, late 1990s. Eluid Martinez during his tenure as commissioner of Reclamation.
Commissioner Martinez: At that time, most of the reservoirs in the West were full of water. Any hydropower issues that arose had to do with maintaining facilities to make sure that they continued to operate as they were expected to. Today, the lack of water in the rivers and reservoirs is drastically affecting their hydropower generating capability, so it’s completely different. I still remember going to Hoover Dam when Reclamation employees were opening the spillway tubes to flush water out of the reservoir. Today, they’re hoping that it rains enough to keep Lake Mead from hitting deadpool.
Hydro Leader: Looking over the decades of your career, what were the biggest trends or changes that you’ve seen?
Hydro Leader: What other hydropower-focused issues did you work on during your time as commissioner?
Hydro Leader: Looking over the course of your career, do you have any advice for Congress or state legislators as they create water policy?
It’s difficult for me to second-guess anybody else, but I would encourage today’s policymakers to reach out to those of the past so that they don’t reinvent the wheel. At the age of 45, I became the first Hispanic state engineer in the United States, and unless I’m mistaken, there has not been another Hispanic state engineer
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A young Eluid Martinez carving a santo.
HALF-CENTURY LEADERS
Hydro Leader: If any of our readers are interested, are they able to see any of your art on a personal website?
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Commissioner Martinez: Yes; my art can be seen at eluidlevimartinezart.com H Eluid Martinez is the former commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. He can be contacted at eluid2010@hotmail.com
appointed in the United States since 1990. I was also the first Hispanic commissioner of Reclamation in its 100 year history. I raise the point because sometimes people from different backgrounds can bring different perspectives to the table that are good for the whole. I don’t subscribe to appointing individuals because of their ethnic background, but I do subscribe argument that if you can reach out to well-qualified ethnic minorities for positions, you should do so, because it brings alternate perspectives to the table.
Commissioner Martinez: As you go into an agency or a firm, try to find and attach yourself to somebody whom you feel comfortable with as a mentor. I had that opportunity with Mr. Reynolds, and I learned a lot from him, not only from his advice but from observing how he acted and how he dealt with issues. A young professional coming into the area of water resources management or development has been trained in the technical aspects of the work but not in the human resources or management application of it. That technical background must be molded by your experiences. Learn from how your mentor makes decisions and presents themself. I was trained as an engineer, but I stopped doing engineering design and so forth early in my career. I became a manager of people and agencies, which is completely different. My other piece of advice to an engineer or a water resource manager is to do what’s in the best interest of the public, the state, and the country. Leave your personal agendas behind. I found in state and federal government that there were individuals who tried to impose their own personal feelings or agendas on public policy. When I was the state engineer and the commissioner, I was concerned to ensure that my employees were not inserting their personal agendas into the organization’s decisionmaking process.
Hydro Leader: Would you tell us about your personal artistic pursuits?
Commissioner Martinez: I was born in Cordova, a little Spanish-American village in northern New Mexico where people irrigate small acreages with acequias. My family has been there since the early 1700s. My mother’s side of the family are folk artists, carvers of religious imagery called santos. My grandfather and my uncle were famous woodcarvers. In the 1960s and 1970s, I began to carve, too, making me a fourth-generation woodcarver. This was before I had become the state engineer or commissioner. By the 1980s, I had developed a reputation as a folk artist. Some of my art pieces have gone into museums. In the 1980s and 1990s, some of my pieces were acquired by the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the New York American Folk Art Museum, and other museums across the West and across the United States. I also painted and did watercolors. I continued to do that through my tenure as the state engineer. Some of my work was displayed in galleries. There’s a prohibition on presidential appointees having any outside source of income, so when I was appointed commissioner of Reclamation, I took all my art pieces out of the galleries and I stopped producing art. Only in the last couple of years have I returned to my art, principally because I’ve tapered off my consulting business. I’m back doing my art and enjoying what I like.
Hydro Leader: Do you have any advice for water professionals who are at the beginning of their careers?
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American Public Power Association, Business and Financial Conference, Savannah, GA
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