FOA: Innovative Solutions for Fish Passage at Hydropower Dams

Announcement

Selection Date: 9/20/2017

Total Award Money: $2,400,000

FOA Objective

Address key technological, environmental, and market challenges as they relate to upstream and downstream fish passage at hydropower dams and assist hydropower owners and operators in meeting rigorous environmental permitting requirements and bring more hydropower online faster.

Description

Cost-effective fish passage technologies will assist hydropower owners and operators in meeting rigorous environmental permitting requirements and bring more hydropower online faster. "Early-stage investments in innovative fish passage solutions are needed to reduce the costs and environmental impacts of new projects," WPTO Director Alejandro Moreno said. "Enabling industry to develop novel technologies that can improve the environmental performance at hydropower facilities ensures that the nation’s hydropower fleet continues to generate clean electricity and provide essential reliability services for the nation’s power grid." Fish passage technologies provide a way for fish to navigate barriers such as dams and impoundments, preserve environmental integrity and river connectivity, and enable downstream and upstream fish migrations.

Specific areas of interest include:

Testing the Effects of Innovative Fish Passage Technologies
Advancing Innovative Methods and Technologies to Improve Fish Passage

EERE Selections

Energy Department Selects Four Projects for Fish Passage Funding

Funding Awardee

Innovative Fish Passage Technologies to Improve Efficiency and Cost
Awardee CID	Date	DOE Award	Cost Share	Project Profile
EE0008338	04/25/2018			Alden Research Laboratory, Inc. of Holden, Massachusetts Alden Research Laboratory, Inc. evaluated a pair of modular and scalable bypass systems for transporting migrant eels downstream in a biologically effective manner by testing the effects of these systems on American eel at in the laboratory’s flume, then at the 3-MW Mine Falls project in Nashua, N.H.
EE0008340	04/25/2018			University of Massachusetts Amherst of Hadley, Massachusetts University of Massachusetts Amherst is evaluating the performance of a novel fishway entrance and auxiliary water system, known as the Entrance Palisade, in a semi-controlled environment.
EE0008341	04/25/2018			Electric Power Research Institute, Inc. of Knoxville, Tennessee Electric Power Research Institute, Inc. of Knoxville, Tennessee will develop and demonstrate the use of machine learning techniques with software tools to automate the detection of adult American eel from multi-beam, imaging sonar data.
	04/25/2018			Black Bear Hydro Partners, LLC: Brookfield Renewable of Milford, Maine Black Bear Hydro Partners, LLC evaluate the performance of the Whooshh Fish Transport System—a new fish passage solution using lengths of flexible tube and slight differences in pressure to gently propel fish up and around obstacles in waterways—for allowing safe, timely, and efficient transport and collection of endangered Atlantic salmon broodstock at the Milford hydroelectric facility on the Penobscot River in Maine.