Abstract
Hydropower Advancement Project was initiated by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to develop and implement a systematic process with a standard methodology to identify the opportunities of performance improvement at existing hydropower facilities and to predict and trend the overall condition and improvement opportunity within the U.S. hydropower fleet. The concept of performance for the HAP focuses on water use efficiency—how well a plant or individual unit converts potential energy to electrical energy over a long-term averaging period of a year or more. The performance improvement involves not only optimization of plant dispatch and scheduling but also enhancement of efficiency and availability through advanced technology and asset upgrades, and thus requires inspection and condition assessment for equipment, control system, and other generating assets. This paper discusses the standard methodology and process for condition assessment of approximately 50 nationwide facilities, including sampling techniques to ensure valid expansion of the 50 assessment results to the entire hydropower fleet. The application and refining process and the results from three demonstration assessments are also presented in this paper.