Development of an operational, full-scale fish protection system at a major pumped-storage hydropower dam
- Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station, Vicksburg, MD (United States)
- AScI, Inc., Calhoun Falls, SC (United States); and others
A large scale, fully operational, integrated fish protection system was developed for Richard B. Russell Dam, a Corps of Engineers pumped-storage hydropower facility with 640 MW conventional generation capacity and 340 MW pumping capacity, on the Savannah River between Georgia and South Carolina. The fish protection system, designed to operate during pumping operation only, combines: (1) knowledge of seasonal and diel movement patterns of fishes to develop guidelines to restrict pumping to periods of minimal fish entrainment potential; (2) detailed 2-dimensional physical and numerical hydraulic modeling to identify high velocity entraining flow zones, low velocity zones, and slack water zones; (3) an acoustic repulsion system employing high-frequency sound to divert blueback herring out of the entraining zone and into low velocity or slack water zones; (4) banks of high pressure sodium incandescent lights located in the low velocity-slack water zones to attract and hold fishes during pumping operation; and (5) a veneer made of 0.32-cm wedge wire on 5.08-cm centers that is placed directly over the trash racks to divert fishes larger than about 35-cm in length from the trash racks. Strobe lights were initially included in the system, but later abandoned after evaluation for effectiveness. Yearlong full recovery net monitoring supplemented by fixed aspect hydroacoustics sampling using two of the four pumped-storage units demonstrates the effectiveness of the fish protection. The total cost of the system was less than one million dollars. Integrating separate fish protection technologies into a comprehensive fish protection system can be used to increase fish protection at hydropower dams.
- OSTI ID:
- 219936
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9507190-; TRN: 96:000708-0018
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Waterpower 1995: international conference, San Francisco, CA (United States), 25-28 Jul 1995; Other Information: PBD: 1995; Related Information: Is Part Of Waterpower`95. Volume 1-3; Cassidy, J.L. [ed.]; PB: 2869 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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