Facing Up to Regulatory, Environmental, Grid, and Workforce Challenges

By Kris Polly

In 2022, Ken Hostler, a 40‑year veteran of hydroelectric operations and maintenance, helped Chalmers & Kubeck, a leading industrial repair and maintenance company, launch a new hydro services division. In our cover interview, we learn about his tight-knit, experienced team and its capabilities and discuss the advantages of having numerous large facilities across the nation.

Next, we speak with Daniel Herder, an Arizona-based senior attorney at international law firm Clark Hill. Mr. Herder’s experience with public power clients, many of whom rely on the federal Colorado River system, gives him an excellent perspective on the regulatory and environmental pressures that are increasingly coming to bear on hydropower in the West.

Francisco Kuljevan brings a decade and a half of hydropower experience at an original equipment manufacturer and a research institute to his new position as U.S. director of hydropower and dams at Hatch, a global engineering company and consulting firm. In our interview, he lays out the broad range of modernization projects that Hatch is facilitating, ranging from multiyear, systemwide overhauls to targeted component upgrades. Equipment life extension, operational flexibility, and pumped storage, he explains, will continue to be hot topics as the grid evolves.

ScoutDI is a Norwegian company whose flying drones can autonomously inspect dams, walls, penstocks, and enclosed spaces, collecting photos and lidar data that are used to create 3‑D models of structures and identify cracks and other points of concern. Eivind Sivertsen, the company’s marketing director, tells us about the benefits this technology can deliver for hydropower owners and operators.

Finally, we speak with Kelly Rogers of the National Hydropower Association about the Future Leaders of Waterpower (FLOW) program, which is welcoming the next generation of hydropower professionals into the industry through leadership training, networking events, public recognition, and more. As the current generation of hydropower leaders prepares to retire, FLOW is helping ensure that its institutional knowledge and expertise are preserved and transferred so that younger professionals are ready to receive the baton.

Extended drought, new regulations, aging infrastructure, changes on the grid, and workforce turnover—there is no shortage of challenges in the hydropower industry. Experience and an openness to new technologies are two important qualities that hydro professionals can bring to the field. Even as U.S. energy needs evolve, however, hydropower will certainly continue to play an important anchoring role in the nation’s energy supply.

Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Hydro Leader magazine and the president and CEO of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.