Hydroelectric

‘The easy jobs are for others’: Utilities discuss challenges and opportunities in hydropower

The HYDROVISION keynote roundtable highlighted issues such as aging infrastructure, supply chain pressures and finding skilled labor.

‘The easy jobs are for others’: Utilities discuss challenges and opportunities in hydropower
(From left to right: Content Director Elizabeth Ingram; Dr. Klaus Engels, Director of Hydropower Germany for Uniper Kraftwerke; and Tom Roode, Chief of Operations and Maintenance for Denver Water. Photo by Clarion Energy. )

Germany’s Walchensee hydropower plant recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, generating at least 30 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in its lifetime.

“Looking backwards, why it was built, it was because there were people who took a bold decision,” said Dr. Klaus Engels, Director of Hydropower Germany for Uniper Kraftwerke.

Dr. Engels spoke as part of a utility executive roundtable at the HYDROVISION opening keynote. Minutes earlier he had accepted the honor of the Walchensee plant being inducted into the Hydro Hall of Fame.

The roundtable focused on challenges and opportunities for utilities with hydropower assets and the greater hydro industry. Dr. Engels said one of the industry’s single biggest challenges today is navigating community and political opposition to projects, along with lengthy re-permitting or re-licensing processes.

“Obviously it was possible to find a compromise,” he said, speaking of when Walchensee was build a century ago. “This is something which I personally miss very much in our society.”

Tom Roode, Chief of Operations and Maintenance for Denver Water, spoke of challenges his utility faces, including the availability of water in the West, long lead times and availability of parts and finding skilled labor. Maintaining the health of assets under inflationary pressures might be the most difficult, he said.

“As a broader water supplier that has hydropower, I think one of our biggest challenges is just aging infrastructure, and the demands for capital and to be able to replace and replenish and maintain that,” he said.

Other challenges included how the increasingly favorable economics of other renewables are driving decisions on the hydro side. Roode said Denver Water has a couple of projects that five years ago, it would have been a “no-brainer” to re-build or re-license.

“Now the question really is, do we put something solar-wise right next to it and not maintain the facility?” he said.

As thermal plants are retired and other renewables continue to come online, both Engels and Roode cited the need to balance environmental stewardship with producing the energy a modern industrial society needs.

“[Hydro] is, for me, the enabler of the energy transition, because it’s flexible, it can be stored and it’s baseload ready,” said Engels. “What we are heavily lobbying for is to put a price tag on flexibility.”

Both speakers highlighted the challenge of attracting and recruiting skilled employees. Engels said years of cost-cutting and restructuring, while not replacing old positions has brought us to this point.

“The problem is that we have a workforce which is condensed to 15 to 20 years,” he said. “That is not a healthy distribution of your workforce.”

Engels said like every company, Uniper Kraftwerke needs to navigate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) while attracting strong talent. He said the utility is focused on the younger generation and recruiting in schools.

Roode said Denver Water has struggled to find enough electricians, mechanics and plumbers. He believes this is the product of trying to steer students toward college, rather than the trades, over the last 30 years.

“Hopefully, the market will start to reward the folks that do take the leap into that industry,” he said, “And they’ll be well-compensated to do it.”

In a call to action, he asked the HYDROVISION keynote audience to be a hydro “evangelist.”

“Hoping this group can go out and talk to their friends, talk to their neighbors, encourage people you know, kids that are going to look for a career in the trades,” said Roode.

Engels circled back to the need for the industry to “do hard things.”

“The easy jobs are for others,” he quipped.