Providing Services for Two U.S. Dept of Energy Next Generation Hydropower Awards

Alden will be contributing to two projects announced last month by the U.S. Department of Energy.  The department announced nearly $9.8 million dollars in funding research and development projects for innovative technologies that will reduce capital costs and deployment timelines for pumped-storage hydropower and non-powered dams.  Alden will be contributing as a vendor to the following two projects:

1.     Natel Energy, Inc. of Alameda, California, will work with Alden to test a laboratory-scale Linear Pelton (LP) hydroEngine® turbine. The technology seeks to reduce total installed cost through civil works simplification and to reduce delivered cost of energy by maintaining high efficiency across a wide range of flow rates.  Alden's role will be to offer input on and witness hydraulic testing of a small-scale prototype unit at Natel's own in-house testing facility.  Subsequently, Alden will test an intermediate-scale prototype unit at Alden's facilities in Massachusetts and summarize these results in a performance report.
 
2.     Canyon Hydro of Deming, Washington, will optimize the design of the traditional Archimedes Screw for use in low-head, high-flow hydroelectric sites. The technology will reduce manufacturing and transportation costs.  Alden's role will be reduced scale physical hydraulic modeling in its Redmond, Washington laboratory to verify the performance of the preliminary designs and to determine peak efficiency as a function of operating parameters.
 
"Alden is continuing our 120 year hydropower innovation tradition through these exciting projects," said Alden President Stuart Cain.  "We are proud to be contributing to advancing hydropower in the United States."