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If you ask Janice Goodenough, hydropower is taken for granted.
Solar and wind are the renewable darlings that command most of the attention, whereas hydropower is quietly reliable, producing more than 60% of renewable energy worldwide.
Goodenough, CEO of HYDROGRID, says she sees evidence of hydropower’s public relations challenge when she travels and speaks in front of groups.
“The audience is baffled, because it doesn’t fit at all into their observation of, how much are we talking about wind and solar, and how much are we talking about electric vehicles?” she said.
But Goodenough also knows the industry can’t rest on its laurels. There are modern challenges that impact the operational profile of hydro assets and ways for the industry to adapt to these realities.
For one, she said climate change is increasingly driving unpredictable weather patterns, so hydropower operators “cannot plan with the same level of certainty for a year in advance.”
Goodenough also noted many existing hydropower plants are decades old, requiring significant investment. This wouldn’t just mean refurbishment of the technical equipment, but also to enable plants to dispatch faster and more flexibly according to grid needs.
“Over the last 100 years, hydro turbine technology has been optimized,” she explained, “And while that’s an advantage, it also presents a challenge—how do we innovate beyond that?”
Additionally, as grids work to accommodate growing amounts of wind and solar power, hydropower’s energy storage capabilities become even more critical.
Goodenough said many hydropower plants are equipped with storage in the form of water retention reservoirs. This makes hydropower able to effectively act as a ‘green battery’, ensuring that energy supply can meet demand when renewable generation dips. However, not all plants are leveraging digital technologies and tools to optimize the use of storage:
“We see over and over again, hydropower plants that physically have storage potential are not actually using their storage, because they either don’t have the digitalization tools to do it or because their concession maybe does not allow them to vary the water level, even though physically speaking, it would absolutely be possible,” said Goodenough.
A generational shift within the industry is also influencing how plants are managed, she said. As a younger generation enters the hydro industry workforce, they typically demand a greater degree of individual flexibility combined with seeking a high level of variety and personal fulfillment in their roles. As a result, operators who rely on manual monitoring and reporting 24/7 may simply not be able to attract the best talents going forward.
“The next generation of operators don’t necessarily want to have to babysit their hydro plants 24 hours a day – but they want to be at all times fully informed of what is going on and able to take charge in order to make the correct strategic decisions” Goodenough noted.
Embracing digitalization
Goodenough sees embracing digitalization as the next frontier for the industry.
HYDROGRID is tackling this challenge head-on with HYDROGRID Insight, its modular platform that allows hydro operators to fully digitalize their processes from water to money.
HYDROGRID Insight combines machine learning algorithms for inflow and electricity price forecasts with intelligent short-, medium-, and long-term optimization for run-of-the-river, storage and cascade hydropower – all in an integrated and fully automatic software package.
This enables hydropower plant operators to respond in real-time to weather events, minimize water losses and maximize their electricity market revenues automatically, while ensuring environmental and operational safety as well as compliance with regulations.
“Rapid reaction to events is becoming more and more important,” she explained.
HYDROGRID Insight has already seen success and is in use for different use cases across hundreds of plants in a wide variety of hydrological contexts, Goodenough said.
In India, it helps operators manage inflow forecasting and water safety in a complex cascade upstream of a major city. In Norway, it automates dispatch processes to prevent reservoir overflow, reducing the need for shift teams to work through the night. In the UK, the platform centralizes data for a large hydropower producer, streamlining operations across departments.
HYDROGRID continues to expand its digitalization efforts. Last December, the company closed US$8.5 million in Series-A funding to fuel a wave of international expansion.
This funding will enable HYDROGRID to accelerate its rapid growth, expand into new markets and enable a successful transition towards a zero-carbon future.
Looking ahead, Goodenough is optimistic about hydropower’s future, especially as digitalization enables the industry to meet 21st-century challenges.
She pointed out that while battery storage solutions are rapidly being developed, hydropower will continue to provide the bulk of renewable storage capacity through 2035, even with all the battery buildouts planned.
Yet, the potential for hydro storage is still largely untapped.
“By our rough estimation, the potential of unused storage capacity in hydro that is available but not being used is about three times as big as all of the battery buildout that’s going to happen until the year 2030,” she said.
For Goodenough, the path forward is clear: policymakers must prioritize investment in both new hydropower projects and the refurbishment of existing plants.
“A renewable transformation without hydropower is absolutely impossible,” she asserted. “There is no renewable future without hydropower.”
To read more on how HYDROGRID Insight can help hydropower reach its full potential, see HYDROGRID’s latest whitepaper, “Improving Hydropower Operations with Digital Solutions” here.
