In July, the DOE announced $4B in loan guarantees for five key areas of renewable energy technology. The loans are part of thePresident?s Climate Action Plan, which aims to cut carbon pollution and decrease greenhouse emissions through a variety of measures, including loan guarantees that support clean, innovative technologies. Among the five areas on which the DOE has decided to aim its considerable focus is the ?enhancement of existing facilities including micro-hydro or hydro updates to existing non-powered dams.?

Peter W. Davidson, Executive Director of the Loan Programs Office (LPO) for the DOE, views the announcement as nothing less than a watershed moment for the U.S. hydropower industry. ?This is the first time the loans programhas specifically called out hydro and small-scale hydro as something we?re interested in developing further,? Davidson said. ?If we can find a way to bring power to some of those 80,000 dams, we could relatively easily tap into a huge amount of power.?

(Above: As part of the PCL Construction design-build team, Black & Veatch designed a new 30-megawatt powerhouse and other hydropower components to increase the installed capacity of Puget Sound Energy?s Lower Baker development to 109 MW. The project was completed in 2013. Credit: Black & Veatch.)

Davidson, who added that there are ?some very noninvasive ways to power up dams? with minimal environmental impact, pointed to a study that identified the potential to harness up to 8 GW of power capacity simply by converting 100 of the country?s top existing non-powered dams to power-generating dams.

?We?re very hopeful that developers will work on projects for these non-powered dams,? Davidson said, adding that doing so would present ?a great opportunity to accelerate the deployment of hydropower in the United States.?

Carlos Araoz, Vice President and Director of Hydropower and Hydraulic Structures for Black & Veatch, pointed to additional areas of hydropower that may also benefit from loan program dollars. These include requests for loans to upgrade existing dam power plants with more modern — and therefore energy efficient — technology. ?There are some very old power plants out there that could be replaced, either on a per-unit basis or by a single unit of a much larger size,? Araoz said.