The presentation was from our ClimateTech occasion in 2022, once we invited scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs in fields from fusion vitality to agriculture to speak about their work. Gia Schneider, a cofounder of Natel Power, was talking about her firm’s mission to design hydropower generators which can be safer for fish.
She confirmed photos of fish that had been hit by typical turbine blades, and let me inform you, it wasn’t good. When the fish hit these fast-moving items of steel, they shortly grew to become … not precisely fish-shaped anymore. Alternatively, the fish swimming by means of Natel’s generators appeared hardly bothered, curving across the blades and occurring their merry method downstream.
Lately, I lastly obtained the prospect to speak with Schneider about how Natel is working to vary hydropower expertise and juggle local weather motion with freshwater ecosystems. Learn all about it in my newest story, and within the meantime, right here’s why I’ve been so obsessive about fish and hydropower tech.
Hydropower is the world’s main supply of renewable electrical energy. It typically performs an important function balancing the grid, since hydroelectric crops with dams can retailer vitality and be ramped up and down to assist meet demand. When hydropower manufacturing goes down, because it did final yr when droughts struck the western US, emissions go up.
However hydropower also can have an entire vary of detrimental results on the atmosphere. Dams have contributed to a collapse in populations of migratory freshwater fish, that are down by greater than 80% since 1970. (Mining and water diversion additionally play a task right here, so we will’t totally blame hydropower and even dams used for different functions.)
Natel is making an attempt to make hydropower a bit extra fish-friendly. Its generators are curved otherwise and have blunter edges that push water out in entrance of them, creating one thing of an “airbag for fish,” as Schneider places it. That helps extra fish go by means of the facility crops safely.
Now is a good time to rethink the expertise we use in hydropower crops, Schneider explains, as a result of the fleet is growing older, and lots of crops are due for recommissioning from regulators within the subsequent decade or so.
