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Concept Overview
Recycling fish-ladder operating water flows using solar photovoltaic power. |
Power Production and Flow Control
Hydropower as a Renewable Resource |
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| Wanapum |
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Grant County PUD www.gcpud.org owns and operates two dams on the Columbia River. The Wanapum and Priest Rapids Dams are run-of-the-river type with limited active reservoir storage. Each dam has two fish ladder assemblies, depending upon weir inlet design, these fish ladders could bypass 1 to 5 Acre-foot per hour around the turbines. One acre-foot will produce about three MWhr at each of these dams. This water is bypassed during both peak and off-peak times. Additional water bypass occurs during certain months to move fish past the dam. This procedure provides a 1000 CFS flow for 24 hours a day during the fish run cycle. This is about 80 AF per hour or @ 240 MWhr/hour. (about $7500 off-peak, > $12000 peak) |
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Both dams are operated as a part of the entire river management system which coordinates water flows to match energy, irrigation and fish survival requirements. Priest Rapids is the primary regulator of flows through the Hanford Reach. This newly designated federally protected area is the last free-flowing section of the Columbia River in the USA and an important spawning area for salmon, steelhead and sturgeon. Its proximity to the Hanford Nuclear Site also increases the importance of adequately regulated river flow.
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| Priest Rapids |
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Power Consumption and Load Shaping |
Grant County PUD provides low-cost, reliable electrical service to many significant customers.
Some of those customers have an implicit inter-connection based on semiconductor technology. The computer industry uses the micro-electronic characteristics of the P/N junction. Power control and generation applications use macro-electronic structures of the same materials. Their economics are related.
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Microsoft Data Center at Quincy, Washington
50 MW peak load |
Yahoo! Data Center Quincy, Washington
25 MW peak load |
REC Solar Grade Silicon Moses Lake, Washington
> 100MW estimated peak load |
The former AsiMi plant at Moses Lake has been retooled from electronic grade to solar grade silicon production. It is 100% owned by REC-PV of Norway. www.rec-pv.com or www.asimi.com
It was the largest global producer of SGS in 2005. A $600 million expansion, now underway, will double its production by 2009 |
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| REC Solar Grade Silicon Plant |
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Washington State has provided significant incentives for Solar PV equipment manufacturers to locate in the area.
A production credit of upto $0.72 / KWhr is available for systems with modules and inverters manufactured in Washington State. No qualifying modules exist today. Xantrex and Outback both manufacture inverters in the state. |
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| One MegaWatt Integrated Roof Array |
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| Peak Utility Load vs. PV Output |
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Utilities with a large air conditioning demand show peak demand curves which are approximated by typical PV output curves. Co-incident peaks could be useful if energy storage was available. |
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