Molly Samuel/KQED

Englebright Dam is not part of any of the hydro projects on the Yuba River, but it's surrounded by them.

When most of the dams in California were built, there were few, if any, safety or environmental regulations governing how they operated. Now most hydropower projects, whether they’re owned by local agencies or power companies, need licenses from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC. (Federal projects don’t require FERC licenses.) Licenses are good for 30 to 50 years, and licensees don’t have to keep up with, for instance, environmental laws passed in the intervening years. So when a hydropower project does come up for relicensing, there’s a lot to catch up on.

I described some of the relicensing process in a radio story for The California Report for Climate Watch’s “Water and Power” series. Dennis Smith, the Hydropower Relicensing Manager for Region 5 for the Forest Service, gave me a taste of how complicated relicensing is when he showed me a flow chart [PDF] of how the process works. It has 39 boxes on it, each a discrete step. A typical application takes at least five years to complete. Some take much longer.

“You could have a child and he would be in the first grade by the time you got a license for a dam,” Smith said.

One reason why relicensing is so complicated, is that the hydropower projects themselves are incredibly complex. We are not talking water wheels here.

Yuba-Bear and Drum Spaulding Projects Schematic (Modeling Version)

This map shows the Yuba-Bear and Drum-Spaulding hydroelectric projects, owned by the Nevada Irrigation District and Pacific Gas and Electric, respectively. These two projects, on the Yuba River in the Sierra Nevada, are so entwined, they’re being relicensed together. Combined, it’s the most complicated hydropower project in the state — possibly in the nation.

“You could describe it as a plate of spaghetti tossed on a map, with meatballs. It almost looks that random until you get to know it,” Steve Rothert, the California Director for environmental group American Rivers, told me. And it’s not the only relicensing happening on the Yuba right now. The Yuba County Water Agency’s Yuba River Development Project is also going through the process.

“Here on the Yuba there are three different hydro projects going through relicensing, that involve over 30 dams and almost 20 powerhouses,” Rothert told me. “And within the next three years these dams will have new licenses that will govern the next 30 to 50 years.”

So the stakes are high when Rothert advocates for better habitat for fish and other animals during relicensing. He’s primarily trying to negotiate for higher flows — for more water to be released into the river. And with a project like Yuba-Bear Drum-Spaulding, he and all the other stakeholders aren’t just trying to agree on a single flow. There are nearly 50 sections of river to evaluate, at different times of year and during all types of years. (The flows during January in a wet year are not the same as the flows during September in a dry year.)

And then there’s the irony of where I interviewed Rothert about hydropower relicensing. We stood overlooking Englebright Dam, built by the Army Corps of Engineers to block sediment from gold mining. Fish can’t get past the dam, and the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a biological opinion [PDF], saying it jeopardizes spring-run Chinook salmon and other species. But it’s not a hydropower dam — and it’s owned by a federal agency, anyway — so it’s not in FERC’s jurisdiction; it doesn’t have to go through relicensing.

And yet, Englebright, too, is linked to the hydropower projects on the Yuba. Two powerhouses are just downstream of it — one owned by PG&E, the other by the Yuba County Water Agency. To misquote John Muir, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Yuba River.”

Craig Miller

Tricky waters: a kayaker navigates the surge at the outlet of the Oxbow Powerhouse on the upper American River.

It’s a fair question and one that a reader posed during our recent series on “Water and Power” in California. Hydro has its virtues. It’s clean, once it’s built; producing hydropower creates no significant greenhouse gas or other emissions. And it’s certainly “renewable” as long as the water flows. But it’s not without its environmental impacts, especially where large “terminal” dams are involved (the kind that fish can’t get past).

In fact, state regulators divide the resource into “large” and “small” hydro, the latter being defined as anything producing 30 megawatts of power or less. Utilities can count small hydro toward their mandated Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) but not the bigger operations. But why?

Partly it’s because there is already so much hydro out there. In a wet year, Californians get about 17% of their electricity from hydro, not counting imports. The RPS is designed to encourage development of new sources, such as wind and solar.

In opposing a recent bill to count larger hydro facilities, The Utility Reform Network (TURN), a watchdog non-profit, wrote that such a reversal:

…would effectively reduce the RPS targets for utilities with existing large hydroelectric  generation in their portfolios and significantly undermine the impact of the RPS program on the development of new renewable energy projects in California and the West.

TURN estimated that changing the rules would effectively reduce California’s target of 33% renewables by 2020, to 30% — even less if utilities increased imports of hydropower from neighboring states.

TURN’s analysts also argued that an over-reliance on hydro could end up raising the retail cost of electricity. That’s not entirely theoretical. At least one report calculated added costs of over a billion dollars when utilities had to shift to more expensive natural gas during a recent dry spell.

The plot twist here is that hydro is an important helper to new “intermittent” renewables like wind and solar. Hydro output can be quickly and easily throttled up or down, to keep the electrical grid in balance as the sun and wind come and go.

This post is part of Climate Watch’s series, “Water and Power.”

Just so we all start on the same page: there are a lot of dams in California. People have been building dams here since the Gold Rush, and though the dam building boom of the first half of the 20th century is long-over, the dams are still here.

This animation shows all the dams in California. To see a breakdown of which ones are connected to hydropower projects (and which rivers in California remain undammed), explore the Water and Power map. Graphics produced by Don Clyde. Research by Lisa Pickoff-White.

When people began building dams in California, they probably were probably mostly thinking about gold. Later, they had more lofty ideals: controlling floods, supplying water to cities and farms, generating electricity.

One thing they probably weren’t thinking much about: pond turtles. Until recently.

On a bright, late spring day Geoff Rabone, the Projects Manager for the Yuba County Water Agency drove me through a padlocked gate and down a dirt road to the Log Cabin Diversion Dam on Oregon Creek. It’s part of the YCWA’s Yuba River Development Project, a complex of dams, tunnels, powerhouses and a reservoir in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. He was showing me the pond turtle study that’s underway there, one of 44 studies the YCWA is conducting as part of its hydropower relicensing process.

We found biologist Lisa Danielski looking through a spotting scope at a Western pond turtle, basking in the sun on the other side of the creek. She works for HDR Engineering, a company the YCWA has hired to conduct this and other studies. At this point, Danielski’s just establishing that the turtles are indeed here. The next step will be to figure out if they are going into a mile-long tunnel that diverts water from this creek to New Bullards Bar Reservoir.

“We’ll set out turtle traps and use epoxy and glue tiny little transponders to their carapace and see where they go,” she said. “Right now we don’t know. This is all new data, so it’s just kind of seeing what’s going on.”

It’s new, because even though the Yuba River Development Project was built in the late-1960s no one’s looked at the big picture: how the project affects the world around it. Not only the turtles, but also the frogs, the fish, the plants, the recreational facilities and the archaeological resources. That’s the case with most big hydropower projects.

Molly Samuel/KQED

Powerlines crisscross the Yuba River, just below the New Colgate Powerhouse.

“When many of these dams were built, there was no Endangered Species Act, there was no Clean Water Act,” Steve Rothert, California Director at American Rivers, told me. “And many of these dams were built before we understood much about how they affected rivers.”

And they do affect rivers. Beyond just blocking a river, dams generally also alter the flow of the water — how much of it comes down the river, and when — and they raise the temperature.

The Yuba project is better than most: after years of fighting, then debates, then discussions, the YCWA and a host of agencies and advocacy groups adopted the Yuba River Accord, which brought changes to how the water is parceled out before relicensing even began.

But for most hydropower projects, at least those that fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Agency, or FERC, relicensing is when everything comes up for review. And with licenses lasting 30-50 years, it happens infrequently enough that when a hydropower project does begin the relicensing process (and not all of them have even done it once yet), the stakes are high. It takes time, money and a lot of people.

Relicensing is a balancing act: everything gets reviewed. Water supply competes with energy generation, recreation, the environment. Though the process has gotten more collaborative, relations between agencies, advocacy groups and hydropower operators have not always been rosy. One infamous relicensing took 27 years.

For the environmental groups, the main focus is flow. “These dams, for the last 50 years for the summer months have let only a trickle of water out of the dams,” Rothert said. “We’re not asking for much, but the licensees have been reluctant to provide what we believe is necessary for just a minimal amount of habitat downstream for trout, for foothill yellow-legged frogs and for all the other creatures that healthy rivers support.”

But letting more water out into the river does have tradeoffs. Rabone said that at the end of YCWA’s relicensing application, it will have cost the agency $20 million. And that’s not the only cost. “The losses in hydropower from relicensing are typically somewhere between 2% and 12% of your hydro generation,” he told me.

So, in the end, it’s a balancing act. Not every party gets everything they want during relicensing, but the goal, at least, is to get enough water to people, plants and animals downstream; to keep the rivers from flooding or trickling away into nothing; to generate electricity; to provide recreation. And as demand for water and energy go up, and as climate change shrinks California’s snowpack, it will only get more complicated.

Hear Molly’s companion radio report Monday on KQED’s The California Report. Explore the rest of the “Water and Power” series, including a map of all of California’s dams — and its undammed rivers.

We’ve mapped all of California’s hydropower dams as part of our series on “Water and Power.”

Craig Miller

PCWA's Ralston Powerhouse on the Rubicon River in Placer County. California typically gets about 15% of its electricity from hydro facilities inside the state..

While much is uncertain about California’s warming climate, there is little doubt that it’s already changing the fundamentals of how most of us get our water. In fact, the Bureau of Reclamation has estimated that the Sierra snowpack could be reduced by half as soon as a decade from now.

And that has some far-reaching implications that could even show up on your electric bill.

“When you hear people talk about a depleted snowpack, it’s because of warmer temperatures and the snow just cannot stay in the hills,” says Robert Shibatani, a hydrologist and consultant to numerous government agencies. He says the “hydrograph” for California — the “usual” pattern of precipitation and runoff — is already changing. “There’s no question about it,” he told me in a recent interview. “That’s not an if. It’s not even a when, because I can tell you the when. It’s happening now.”

Shibatani says it’s not that we’ll get less precipitation, necessarily, but warming temperatures will mean more of it falling as rain at higher elevations. And the relatively steady runoff we’ve come to count on to fill the reservoirs and spin the turbines throughout the summer and fall will be compressed into the late winter and early spring.

“What it’s gonna mean is that we’re gonna spill more often,” says Einar Maisch, strategic planning director for the Placer County Water Agency. “And that means we’re gonna lose generation.”

Maisch says his agency is already enlarging spillways to accommodate bigger springtime rushes of water — and he’s prepared to see power generation taper off by 5-to 6 percent at his facilities, which generates more than 200 megawatts of power, purchased by PG&E.

“Water that goes over the top [during those high-pulse periods] does not go through a turbine,” he says.

At other times, there may not be enough runoff to spin the turbines reliably. We had a sneak preview of that during those three dry years in a row that we had recently. Overall, during that time hydro generation was roughly cut in half, says water analyst Juliet Christian-Smith at Oakland’s Pacific Institute. “That has a price tag and an environmental impact as well.”

Craig Miller

PG&E's Belden Powerhouse on the upper Feather River. This stretch of the Feather has so many hydro plants on it that it's become known as the "Stairway of Power."

She ran the numbers and found that as utilities were forced to switch some of the load to natural gas-fired plants to make up the difference, “The cost to electricity consumers was about $1.7 billion dollars.” That’s billion, with a “B.” And here are some more billions from the same time frame: 13 billion additional tons of carbon dioxide emissions because, well, burning natural gas emits CO2 and hydropower does not. Christian-Smith says that, “Given the impact of this drought on our energy production possibilities and the costs that we had to pay for energy, it’s important to think about what a longer and more severe drought might do.”

And there’s another rub, says PCWA’s Maisch. “Hydro is unique.” Not only is it the cheapest form of power imaginable, but it’s the most “dispatchable,” as they say, when utilities need to make quick adjustments to meet fluctuations in electrical demand.

On a tour of one of his agency’s powerhouses, near where the Rubicon River meets the MIddle Fork of the American, “Throttling the needle valves on the Ralston generator over there can change the amount of flow by 50% within 10 minutes. It gives us a tremendous ability to ramp in counter-flow to the changes in the grid.”

That’s not a trivial matter as utilities try to balance a power grid with an increasing percentage of on-again, off-again renewables, like wind and solar. PG&E’s David Moller, who heads the National Hydropower Association, said in a recent company publication that, “The operating flexibility of hydropower is essential to grid reliability and integrating intermittent renewables.” He’s calling for an expansion of hydro, pointing out that of the 80,000 dams across the country, just three percent currently have hydro installed.

But any expansion in California will be a tricky proposition given the environmental sensitivities of the state’s mountain regions. Most projects have recently gone through — or are going through — tortuous renewals of their federal licenses, which usually result in a net reduction of power generated to accommodate environmental concerns. And in California, utilities can’t count hydropower toward their renewable energy targets.

Hear Craig’s companion radio report Monday on KQED’s The California Report. We’ve mapped all of California’s hydropower dams as part of our series on “Water and Power.”

How many gallons to run that microwave?

Lauren Sommer / KQED

A natural gas power plant in Long Beach that uses "once-through" cooling.

We hear a lot about how green our energy is in California. Instead of using coal, the state runs on natural gas and increasingly, renewable power.

But there’s a hidden cost to our energy supply: water use. In fact, every time you turn on a light, it’s like turning on your faucet. It’s been calculated that it takes 1.5 gallons of water to run a 100-watt light bulb for 10 hours.

The way water and power work together is a lot like a tea kettle. Steam drives the power industry.

How Power Needs Water

You can see it at the Gateway Generating Station, a natural gas power plant in the northeast Bay Area. The plant looks complicated but making power is pretty simple. Step number one: burn natural gas. That produces a lot of heat.

“You’ve got 1,700-degree exhaust energy, or waste heat,” says Steve Royall of PG&E, who is giving me a tour through the maze of pipes and compartments. The heat hits pipes that are filled with water and the water is boiled off to create steam. That’s step number two: make steam to turn a steam turbine, which is attached to a generator. It’s the water that’s making the power.

Source: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Illustration by Andy Warner.

But water has another job in power plants. That steam, even after it makes power, is still hot. So, most power plants use water to cool it down. “You’ve got to have the ability to cool everything down so the cycle can continue and your equipment doesn’t overheat,” says Royall. (Learn more about how power needs water in this illustration).

Nuclear plants and coals plants use water the same way, in some cases, millions of gallons a year. In fact, nationwide, power plants need more freshwater than farms do, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study.

Newer power plants reuse water, but a lot of it is lost to evaporation, which means it has to be replenished. “Typically water has been the most abundant resource available,” says Royall, “but as water resources become more valuable, it’s extremely important that we think about water use.”

Future of Water Scarcity

“There is a general understanding that the era of abundance is over,” agrees Heather Cooley of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based think tank focused on water issues.

“Water resources are limited and there is a growing demand. We have growing population in the West. We have a growing economy.”

And then there’s the climate – which is changing. “The climate models suggest that water availability will be more variable. So we’ll have wetter years, we’ll have drier years. We’ll have a smaller snowpack,” says Cooley. In some places, power plants are already feeling the effects of tightening water supplies.

Power plants can cut their water impact by using recycled water. “We can look at less water-intensive renewable energy systems. So looking at wind and at solar panels,” says Cooley.

But it turns out, some renewables need water, too.

Solar Technology Grapples with Water Costs

In a parched corner of California’s Mojave Desert, construction equipment shimmers in the mid-day heat. These 3,500 acres near the Nevada border are the site of the Ivanpah Solar Project.

“The Ivanpah project, when it’s operational, will be the largest solar thermal project operating in the world,” says Joseph Desmond with BrightSource Energy.

You’ll notice he said “solar thermal,” a technology that’s different than the solar panels you see on rooftops. The plant is a huge field of mirrors that are specially angled to focus the sun’s heat at a tower, 400 feet tall.

“Inside the top of that tower is a boiler. All of the energy is then is used to create high temperature, high pressure steam in excess of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit,” says Desmond.

That spins a steam turbine that makes electricity. Just like a natural gas plant, that steam has to be cooled back down, which is normally done with water. In the desert, it’s not easy to find. “You have to dig down, I want to say about 840 feet,” says Desmond.

The Ivanpah solar project under construction. (Photo: BrightSource Energy)

So, the Ivanpah plant will use a new technology called “dry cooling.” Instead of using water, the plant uses massive fans to blow air over the pipes of hot steam. “Air cooling allows us to reduce the water consumption by as much as 90%,” says Desmond.

But there’s a catch. Dry cooling uses more energy, so the plant’s not as efficient. It’s even less efficient when it’s hot out.

It also costs more to build. “It can range between one and five percent more. Now, that may not seem like a lot but when you’re competing and every penny counts, it’s an important factor,” Desmond says.

Three of the seven solar thermal plants planned in California won’t use dry cooling. But Desmond says, even though the state needs renewable power, he doesn’t think agencies would approve that today. “I think it’s safe to say if somebody said we’d like to use water cooling, that getting a permit for that would be challenging to say the least.”

The same could be true for fossil fuel plants, too, as California’s future water supply is called into question more and more.

Explore the Water and Power series and hear Lauren’s radio story on KQED’s The California Report.

Explore the Water and Power series and hear Dan’s story on KQED’s The California Report.

When you open that faucet, it’s more than water that’s flowing.

A few years back, number crunchers at the California Energy Commission tried to add up how much electrical power (and other forms of energy) goes into using water in California. The bottom line number they came up with: 19%. That is, nearly a fifth of all the power generated in California — as well as huge quantities of natural gas and diesel fuel consumed in the state — goes into water-related uses. You might call that report, entitled California’s Water-Energy Relationship, as The Great Wake-Up Call. The idea that so much power could go into this one vital activity—moving and treating and using water—is both stunning and captivating. And it has spurred both state agencies and water and power utilities into action.

Graphic by Andy Warner

The California Public Utilities Commission, responsible for overseeing the activities of the state’s big investor-owned electric utilities on one hand and numerous small water providers on the other, responded to the 19% number by authorizing a series of pilot projects to assess how to cut the amount of power used in connection with water. Since the CPUC is supposed to make sure that utility investments are cost-effective and don’t burden ratepayers with excessive charges, the focus of most of the pilots was on areas where utilities could get the most bang for the buck. Mostly, that turns out to be water conservation.

CA Dept. of Water Resources

The California Aqueduct moves water from Northern California to Southern California.

The logic for that is pretty straightforward: Water is heavy (62.4 pounds per cubic foot) and tends to resist moving uphill. It takes a lot of energy to move water, but also to treat it, and then treat it again after we use it. If you use less water, you move and treat less water, and you use less energy. The pilot projects ranged from installing high-efficiency toilets and low-flow shower heads in a jail to high-tech systems to manage landscape irrigation, to new methods of closely regulating pumping operations to minimize power consumption.

Rami Kahlon, who directs the CPUC’s Water Division, says the pilot projects did show water savings but were less successful in showing reduced energy consumption. “We were hoping it would be easier to quantify how much energy is in water,” he says. “We were hoping that we could operate pumps and motors more efficiently and gain huge energy savings. That just didn’t occur. But the effort was worthwhile because it gave us ideas of where we need to put our focus.”

In fact, the effort has led the CPUC to dive deeper into the water-energy nexus. One preliminary finding: The California Energy Commission’s oft-quoted 19% “power for water” number is likely an underestimate (among other findings, the CPUC says a lot more power is needed for pumping groundwater than previously known). And in a decision adopted last month, the commission recognized the water-energy nexus as an area for big potential power savings and invited utilities to submit new project proposals.

See our illustrated guide to learn how water needs power in California