| Hydro power accounts for approximately 8 % of the United States’ electricity generation and approximately 75 % of its renewable energy. Over the last decade, however, growth in the U. S. hydropower industry has been rather stagnant. Few, if any, new projects have been built and upgrades at existing hydro facilities or development at non-hydro dams have been scant.
According to the U. S. Department of Energy, approximately 21,000 MW of unused hydro-power potential is sitting at existing dams in the U. S. and the insatiable demand for energy in North America, already greater than anywhere else in the world, continues to grow at a steady pace.
Hydro owners in the United States focus on increasing energy production by upgrading the thousands of hydroelectric plants that were built from the early 1900s through the mid 1980s, while Canadian hydro owners continue to construct new hydro facilities and modernize existing ones.
With the specialized business strategy "Integrated Services“ (IS), Voith Hydro has positioned itself to help customers evaluate, optimize and implement hydro modernization as well as new hydro construction with the focus on value added solutions that provide the lowest total ownership cost.
Examples of this include innovative “fish-friendly“ Kaplan and “aerating“ Francis runner designs that have been developed, installed and tested to reduce the environmental impact of hydro even further.
Voith Hydro has installed more than 3,000 units with a total output of around 58,000 MW in North America. |
