Materials and Manufacturing
The Water Power Program funds R&D to identify and test new materials and manufacturing techniques that improve the performance and lower the costs of hydropower. Areas of program-funded research focus include materials or coatings that reduce the life-cycle cost of turbine runners, draft tubes, and penstocks, and identification and testing of ways to improve generator efficiency and reliability.
Hydropower Systems
The Water Power Program works to develop, demonstrate, and test new technologies and techniques that can improve the energy efficiency and environmental performance of hydropower. The program's activities support industry by reducing capital and operations and maintenance costs, increasing unit availability and plant capacity factors, reducing risk through enhanced system reliability, and improving the quality—environmental performance attributes as well as ancillary power benefits—and quantity of the energy produced. Areas of focus include water-use optimization, the application of advanced materials and manufacturing methods, and modeling and prediction of water power grid services.