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Figuring a Susitna hydro power profile Susitna-Watana power plant will likely vary its output to match power load, but environmental issues will constrain power profile Alan Bailey Petroleum News
With work getting under way on the design and environmental studies for a planned major Alaska hydroelectric plant at Watana on the Susitna River, one of the issues that the project team will need to grapple with is the balancing of the power output requirements of the system with the need to minimize the environmental impacts of altering the flow of the river downstream from the facility’s dam. Increasing the power output will artificially increase the flow in the river, while cutting the power back will restrain the flow.
Wayne Dyok, project manager for the Alaska Energy Authority’s Susitna-Watana hydro project, told the Alaska House Energy Committee on Jan. 26 that a key strategy will be ensuring reliable energy supplies during the winter period from November through April. And earlier in January Bryan Carey, engineering manager for the Alaska Energy Authority, told the Alaska Association of Environmental Professionals that it would likely be necessary to conserve some of the summer water flow for use in the winter — early summer snow melt causes an especially high river flow in June.
High summer flow However, minimizing environmental impacts downstream from the power plant would likely require relatively high river flow rates to be maintained in the summer, thus resulting in higher levels of power generation during the summer than during the winter, Carey said. And, although power demand is higher in the winter than in the summer, abundant hydro power in the summer could provide opportunities for other generation facilities on the grid to schedule maintenance shutdowns, he said.
Dyok said that, on a daily basis, the intent would be to vary the hydropower output to follow the ups and downs of hour-to-hour power demand. That would enable gas-fired plants, for example, elsewhere on the grid, to run at a relatively constant output, thus enabling these plants to operate at maximum efficiency.
And, although the hydro plant would likely be running well below is maximum capacity in the winter, it should be possible to temporarily boost the power output in the event of an emergency, such as an equipment outage somewhere in the power grid.
That’s the advantage of hydropower, its ability to load follow, Dyok said.
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