Hydropower Versus Fish

By: Jessica Robertson

With the challenge of answering the biggest environmental problems of our age comes the responsibility to simultaneously bring balance to all aspects of the planet. Unfortunately, harmony does not always exist between the various strategies for environmental improvement, but it is our responsibility to establish and preserve healthy relationships between all aspects of the environment.

One not-so-harmonious relationship is represented in the current battle between the fish population and the high-pressure dams powering the hydropower industry. Hydropower is an essential component of the new environment-focused energy industry. Renewable, clean energy is produced and stored by capturing the potential of flowing water, often with dams and turbines in rivers. However, these mechanisms are detrimental to fish in their locale.

Fast, coursing water churns powerfully around the dam area, creating a pressure change that is so dramatic that it can cause serious internal injury or death to fish. The forces can burst a fish’s swim bladder, an organ responsible for maintaining buoyancy at a particular depth; it is designed to inflate and deflate as needed, but the pressure changes in this phenomenon, known as barotrauma, simply cause too much change too fast for the swim bladder to withstand. Besides these serious internal injuries, fish can also become disoriented in the raging waters around the machinery, and they are at risk of being thrashed about by blades of the turbine.

Even with the great success and promise of hydropower, the industry is aware of the dangers to local fish populations. Hydropower is too crucial to the development of a sustainable planet to be forgotten, but, at the same time, it is intolerable that our ecosystem suffer at the hands of “clean” energy. Is hydropower truly “clean” or “sustainable” if whole populations of water-dwelling animals are lost?

The dilemma is being quickly addressed across the globe in laboratories and in real-life application. Strategies are being implemented for preventing the dangerous pressure change around the dam, making rivers again safe for their inhabitants, and making clean energy truly clean.

Organizing Energy

By: Jessica Robertson

When we think about renewable energy, few downsides come to mind. Wind parks, solar energy, biogas, and other renewable sources have inspired us and reminded us that we can make wise choices for our planet. The variable nature of these renewable sources, however, does mean that their levels of energy production on a day-to-day and month-to-month basis will inevitably undergo fluctuation. In order to bring the highest level of efficiency to the power grid, these fluctuations must be accounted for and the sources combined in an intelligent way.

            Researchers strongly agree that a model that relies heavily on variable and renewable energy sources can still be a perfectly viable model, though more organization is needed than for traditional power supply. Dr. Kurt Rohrig, deputy director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology IWES in Kassel, Germany, and other experts, assert that by using numerous small energy producers that feed into the grid at varying times, the grid can be made highly reliable. This requires a major shift from the current system where big power plants are king, but change is inevitable when the environmental paradigm is shifting as quickly as it is currently.

            The multitude of small energy providers in the new concept would all be grouped in an intelligent software program, causing them to resemble a power plant, but a virtual one. Tests conducted using the software saw deeply promising results. The variations in sun and wind that make power production unpredictable in one locale can be leveled out to an appropriate average when including a larger number of smaller plants through the software.

            Proper organization of renewable energy sources and the power that they produce impacts the planet profoundly. We can reduce the waste and pollution left behind by dirtier forms of energy production by efficiently and intelligently using these environmentally friendly systems.