2 Mon River Dams Could Get Hydropower
Mass. company files for license, eyes 2014 to begin construction
Morgantown Dominion Post
19 November 2011
By Alex Lang
The buzz of electricity could someday be heard at the Morgantown
Lock & Dam.
A Massachusetts-based company, Free Flow Power, filed documents
this week with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to
possibly bring hydropower to the Morgantown Lock & Dam and the
Opekiska Lock & Dam.
Both dams are on the Monongahela River.
Jon Guidroz, director of project development with Free Flow Power,
said the earliest the license could be approved is the end of
2013, so construction couldn’t start until 2014.
Neither dam has hydropower generators, said Jeff Benedict, with
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District.
The projects will be conventional hydropower and will use a
turbine generator in a low-profile powerhouse to create the
electricity, according to the filings. Each project will construct
a new control building on available land near each dam and will
have a substation next to the control building.
There will also be overhead transmission lines that will connect
to the local utility distribution lines.
The transmission lines will be no larger than a line people would
see on a telephone pole outside of their house, Guidroz said. It’s
too early in the process to say whether the electricity would stay
local.
Guidroz said the planning for the hydropower project is still in
the early stages.
The Morgantown hydropower station would generate enough power to
provide electricity for 2,100 typical homes each month, Guidroz
said.
But the project is pretty small in scale when compared to other
hydropower-producing dams. Guidroz said the Morgantown dam will
produce 2.5 megawatts of electricity. The Hoover Dam produces
1,345.
The company said so far it hasn’t seen much debate about the plan.
“Free Flow Power has engaged in outreach throughout 2011 regarding
the projects and has encountered minimal controversy at this
time,” the company wrote in its filing.
It did note that additional information will be needed to fully
evaluate the potential project effects. The company wrote that its
approach to project design is to promote compatibility with the
existing environment.
There are 77,000 dams with the potential to have hydropower,
Guidroz said. Free Flow Power looks at many of them and tries to
see which ones could have hydropower with a low impact.