Small Hydro

Small Hydro. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

Small or micro hydro projects are those that individual farms, ranches and small businesses can under take. Jed Jorgensen, Senior Energy Project Manager for the Energy Trust of Oregon gives us a brief rundown of small hydro projects.

JORGENSEN: It can be a lot of different things. I think the easiest way to thing about it with any hydro opportunity you’ve got to have two things, water and water moving downhill so you’ve got some pressure behind it. And if you’ve got either of those two things in any sort of quantity then you might have the ability to do a small hydro project.

Jorgensen talks about some of the ways small hydro is being used.

JORGENSEN: I’ve seen ranch scale projects. I like to call them, down in the 5 to 10 kilowatt capacity. That could be a turbine and generator that;s not really that different from a small farm pump in terms of size so these are really small projects but depending on your energy usage they can kick off enough energy to potentially power your house or your business depending on what your needs are.

The Energy Trust of Oregon works with their customers to provide services and cash incentives on projects like these.

JORGENSEN: With the hydro program in specific what we can do is offer what we call project development assistance if you are trying to figure out if you have the potential for a project and that can mean looking at your site, helping to understand what kind of resource you have, doing feasibility studies or if it becomes clear that you do have a resource we can help with some of the permitting work or the design work and help you find the right people to assist you in those processes.

He says there is also help available when it comes to installing your small hydro project.

JORGENSEN: I think the biggest opportunities in the Pacific Northwest are with irrigation districts or irrigation customers. The places that I see them happening the most with the smaller customers tend to be where folks have water rights and they’re pulling water off a ditch or canal and it has to go downhill to get to their property.

For additional information on small hydro visit energytrust.org and be sure to visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.???www.harvestcleanenergy.org