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Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is What's Your Problem, the

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Speaker 1: show where I talk to people who are trying to

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Speaker 1: make technological progress. My guest today is Gia Schneider. Ga

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Speaker 1: is the co founder and CEO of Natel Energy, and

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Speaker 1: her problem is this, can you get all the good

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Speaker 1: parts of hydro electric power without the bad? In order

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Speaker 1: to solve that problem, there's sort of two sub problems

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Speaker 1: that Gia has to solve. First, how do you build

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Speaker 1: a turbine that can go into a river and generate

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Speaker 1: power without chopping up fish? That, as you'll hear in

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Speaker 1: the first part of the show, is an interesting engineering challenge.

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Speaker 1: And then in the second part of the show, Gia

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Speaker 1: talks about a second problem to solve, how do you

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Speaker 1: put dams in rivers without messing up the broader ecosystem?

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Speaker 1: And I have to say I found that part of

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Speaker 1: the conversation particularly interesting. For one thing, it involves beavers,

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Speaker 1: always fun. Second, and perhaps more importantly, that part of

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Speaker 1: the conversation changed the way I think about rivers. So

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Speaker 1: let's start with the Let's start with the happy. Why

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Speaker 1: is hydro power great?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, hydropower is a great source of energy because it

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Speaker 2: is reliable and predictable. What that means is that if

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Speaker 2: I'm sitting here today and I'm looking forward at what

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Speaker 2: I can expect to get out of my power plant

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Speaker 2: over to say, the next day, the next week, I

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Speaker 2: have a very good idea of what I will get

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Speaker 2: minute to minute, hour to hour. And that reliability is

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Speaker 2: really valuable in terms of balancing out the operation of

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Speaker 2: a grid and keeping a grid reliable.

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Speaker 1: Right that, and that is not true. Were not as

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Speaker 1: true importantly of solar power or wind power. Right, those

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Speaker 1: are more intermittent and less predictable. So those are reasons

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Speaker 1: why hydro power is great. Why is hydro power bad?

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Speaker 2: What's the problem? Yeah, so hydro is The challenges with

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Speaker 2: hydro or the negatives really come from the fact that

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Speaker 2: the way in which hydropower works is by taking water

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Speaker 2: and moving it across an elevation drop through a turbine.

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Speaker 2: And to get that elevation drop, we generally have built dams,

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Speaker 2: and those dams then change the way in which rivers

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Speaker 2: flow in sometimes very material ways, and rivers are effectively

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Speaker 2: the circulatory system of the planet. And so as you

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Speaker 2: can imagine, as you start to like change those flow patterns,

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Speaker 2: that has some real implications for the ecosystem around those rivers.

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Speaker 1: Right, So dams can mess up the rivers, correct, and

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Speaker 1: then the turbines themselves can be bad as well.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, the turbines themselves, and you know have they

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Speaker 2: are amazing machines that have been highly engineered for high

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Speaker 2: efficiency and performance. They are, they're very outstanding engineering products.

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Speaker 2: At the same time, they aren't very safe in many

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Speaker 2: cases for passage of aquatic life.

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Speaker 1: They're like fish blenders in the middle of the river.

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Speaker 2: It's not necessarily always quite as bad as fish blenders,

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Speaker 2: but yes, bottom line is you can kind of average

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Speaker 2: it out and say like one in five fish through

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Speaker 2: a conventional turbine generally won't survive.

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Speaker 1: So there's sort of two levels of problems. One is

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Speaker 1: the dam and the other is the turbine. Correct.

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Speaker 2: Correct.

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Speaker 1: So let's start with the turbine problem. Just in the

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Speaker 1: case of the US, What are the main fish of

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Speaker 1: concern species of concern? What fish are getting chopped up

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Speaker 1: by turbines?

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Speaker 2: Well, there are many fish, of course. The species of

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Speaker 2: concern that raise to the kind of top of the

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Speaker 2: list from a human perspective at least are salmon because

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Speaker 2: sand and as a commercial fishery that has a lot

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Speaker 2: of value, and eel is a more recent species of concern.

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Speaker 2: Eel is less because it's a commercial fishery, but more

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Speaker 2: actually because eel are a critical part of the life

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Speaker 2: cycle for freshwater muscles. And one of the things that

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Speaker 2: we've really started to understand in the last decade or

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Speaker 2: so is that freshwater muscles are really critical to water quality,

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Speaker 2: and we as humans care about water quality a lot,

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Speaker 2: even if we might not care that much about freshwater

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Speaker 2: muscles or eel.

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Speaker 1: So just to be clear, like if you put a

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Speaker 1: turbine in a river and the eel get chopped up

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Speaker 1: in it, the water quality.

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Speaker 2: Gets worse, yes, bottom line, yep.

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Speaker 1: And I've heard of you know, ladders and things like

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Speaker 1: that for fish, like why didn't pre existing solutions work

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Speaker 1: very well?

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Speaker 2: So actually we have focused quite a bit on getting

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Speaker 2: fish upstream with ladders and have had you know, some

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Speaker 2: degree of success with that for certain species. Eel and

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Speaker 2: salmon actually are both able to navigate ladders of different

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Speaker 2: types upstream, eel in particular quite well. The thing that

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Speaker 2: we had focused less on is how do we get

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Speaker 2: fish back downstream safely? So actually building ways to get

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Speaker 2: fish to move upstream is in some ways maybe a

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Speaker 2: more accessible problem than how do you deal with getting

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Speaker 2: fish to move safely downstream? Where from a hydropower perspective,

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Speaker 2: you want most of that water moving through your turbine

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Speaker 2: because the amount of water going through your turbine is

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Speaker 2: directly relevantly on energy you create.

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Speaker 1: Right, So it's a difficult trade off. You could either

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Speaker 1: route the water around the turbine and then the fish

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Speaker 1: don't die, but then you don't get any power because

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Speaker 1: you rounted all the water around your.

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Speaker 2: Turb right, right, And so the mitigation, the interim mitigation

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Speaker 2: that folks have started to explore, is to put screens.

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Speaker 2: So not just so all hydropower plants have what are

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Speaker 2: called trash racks to keep like, you know, shopping carts

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Speaker 2: and logs and all sorts of things that rip from

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Speaker 2: going through the turbine, but those trash racks you know,

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Speaker 2: will have you know, an inch to four inch spacing,

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Speaker 2: so quite a few things fish, you know, can make

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Speaker 2: it through. So folks have looked at screens. But the

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Speaker 2: problem with screens is that the finer the screen, the

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Speaker 2: more likely you are to keep fish out. But the

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Speaker 2: finer the screen, the more efficiency loss you have across

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Speaker 2: the screen.

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Speaker 1: The screen it just gets covered and leaves Schmitz and whatever. Yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: so your notion is like, let's let's fix the blade itself.

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Speaker 1: Can we make a blade that will generate power and

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Speaker 1: not kill fish exactly? Exactly? Seems seems hard, Like when

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Speaker 1: you're setting out to do this, what what are you

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Speaker 1: thinking about?

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Speaker 2: So conventional turbines particularly, you know, probably most folks are

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Speaker 2: familiar with, say a wind turbine. They are circular in nature,

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Speaker 2: and so what that means as they spin is the

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Speaker 2: tips are moving faster than the center of the blade.

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Speaker 2: If anybody's been on the merry ground, you know that.

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Speaker 2: So one thought we had was because speed is directly

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Speaker 2: proportional to the speed at which something hits you, is

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Speaker 2: going to have a relation to how hard or how

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Speaker 2: much it hurts.

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Speaker 1: Right right, if you're a fish, you're more likely to

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Speaker 1: die by a blade that's spinning really fast, correct exactly.

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Speaker 2: And so one way to change the ratio and have

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Speaker 2: a consistent speed across the whole length of the blade

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Speaker 2: is to instead of having blades move in a circle

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Speaker 2: around a central hub, to if you think about taking

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Speaker 2: the center hub and a turban and splitting it in

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Speaker 2: two and stretching it apart. It was a very different.

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Speaker 1: Design, sounds very complicated.

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Speaker 2: It was hard to picture, yes, And I think bottom line,

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Speaker 2: we realized after a lot of work, we didn't need

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Speaker 2: to do that. We could just make a better blade

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Speaker 2: shape on a conventional turbine design. But that took quite

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Speaker 2: a bit of work to get to that point.

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Speaker 1: How did you figure that out?

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Speaker 2: Well, the simple version is a lot of trial and

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Speaker 2: error and a lot of you know, experimentation. Where we

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Speaker 2: ended up is actually I think a very simple and

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Speaker 2: elegant solution, which is which which belies the amount of

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Speaker 2: work that went into it.

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Speaker 1: Often in the case like it's easy once you know

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Speaker 1: how to do it right, figuring out how to do

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Speaker 1: it is hard.

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Speaker 2: Right and and the simple elegant solution basically it comes

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Speaker 2: down to two things. One is that the leading edge

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Speaker 2: of the blade itself is fairly thick relative to the

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Speaker 2: size of fish interacting with it, and so that is

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Speaker 2: kind of intuitive. If you have a you have a

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Speaker 2: blunt edge moving through the water as opposed to a

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Speaker 2: knife edge moving through the water. The blunt edge is

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Speaker 2: going to be better for interacting with like things get deflected,

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Speaker 2: fish get deflected, or if.

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Speaker 1: You think of it from the fish's point of view,

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Speaker 1: like if you're swimming into a knife blade, that's going

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Speaker 1: to mess you up more than if you're swimming into

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Speaker 1: like a little wall right.

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Speaker 2: Right, like a rounded a rounded wall or rounded rounded rounded.

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Speaker 2: So that's one part and then the other part is

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Speaker 2: and actually the physics around it are fairly interesting because

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Speaker 2: that rounded edge creates a almost like an air bag,

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Speaker 2: like a you can think of it like as a

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Speaker 2: as a field like water water bag, and it basically

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Speaker 2: helps deflect stuff around the blade.

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Speaker 1: So that part's good stuff, including fish.

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Speaker 2: Stuff including fish. And then the other part was to

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Speaker 2: solve that problem of the fact that the tips move

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Speaker 2: faster than the hub than the center, and to do

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Speaker 2: that we then introduced a swoop forward of the blade.

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Speaker 2: And that is again you know a little bit of

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Speaker 2: physics is what that. But the way to intutorly understand

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Speaker 2: it is that if you're if you're swimming through water

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Speaker 2: and you get struck with a glancing blow as opposed

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Speaker 2: to a direct blow, the glancing blow hurts a lot less.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I want a glancing blo those are my choice, right, And.

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Speaker 2: So by swooping the blade forward, it simply it basically

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Speaker 2: means that you don't have direct strikes. You have glanc

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Speaker 2: Dange strikes, and the energy of that impact is now

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Speaker 2: dramatically less and that leads directly to survival. So all

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Speaker 2: of this is around the leading edge of the blade,

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Speaker 2: and that's all tied up with fish safety. The rest

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Speaker 2: of the blade shape is all about performance again because

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Speaker 2: we have to have high performance, hig efficiency machines. And

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Speaker 2: so the twin engineering challenges were this then balancing the

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Speaker 2: shape on the leading edge with the shape of the

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Speaker 2: rest of the blade. So we have a highly fished

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Speaker 2: safe leading edge with a high performing rest of the blade. Right.

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Speaker 1: So now you've figured out how to not kill fish,

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Speaker 1: but you have to make sure you can still generate power.

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Speaker 1: It still has to work.

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Speaker 2: It still has to work, still has to work at

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Speaker 2: you know, ninety ninety three percent efficiency. That's these are

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Speaker 2: very very high performance machines. And then I think the

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Speaker 2: other additional construt that we face is a design approach

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Speaker 2: that can design blades that are able to go into

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Speaker 2: all of the existing hydropower plants that we have today.

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Speaker 2: When we're talking about hydro, we're talking about dealing with

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Speaker 2: a large, existing installed base that we want to upgrade

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Speaker 2: to be fish safe, which means we need to go

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Speaker 2: into the existing concrete and all the other stuff that's there.

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Speaker 1: So this is essentially a replacement part building a whole

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Speaker 1: new system. We're building a replacement part. So just so

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Speaker 1: you figure out how to build this thing, and just

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Speaker 1: tell me, what does it look like to somebody who

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Speaker 1: doesn't know about all the swooping and the wide blade.

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Speaker 1: Just if you look at it, what does it look like?

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Speaker 2: It looks like a propeller, but with a very punky,

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Speaker 2: you know, big thick leading edge.

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Speaker 1: Uh huh, Yeah, I mean I looked at it and

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Speaker 1: I thought like, oh, it just looks like a jet

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Speaker 1: engine kind of right. There's like a around there's like

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Speaker 1: a metal cylinder with the blade inside of it. Correct, Like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't know. You wouldn't know how hard it was

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Speaker 1: or that it doesn't kill fish if you looked at it.

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Speaker 2: That's correct.

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Speaker 1: There is there a moment when you when you test it,

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Speaker 1: is there like, okay, we made this thing, let's see

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Speaker 1: if it kills fish. Like, how do you figure out

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Speaker 1: if it kills fish.

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Speaker 2: We have a water tank and a pump and we

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Speaker 2: recirculate water through a set of pipes through a turbine.

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Speaker 2: That turbine has a transparent housing around it, so we

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Speaker 2: can take high speed video so we can see the

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Speaker 2: fish as they go through.

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Speaker 1: Cool see what they do. You're just dump fishing and

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Speaker 1: say good luck fish.

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Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, and then we I mean, this is all

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Speaker 2: very scientific, right, So we tag each fish that goes

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Speaker 2: through the turbine, we capture it at the end, we

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Speaker 2: have we inspect the fish before, we inspect the fish

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Speaker 2: after we hold the fish for forty eight hours after

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Speaker 2: they go through the turbine. We have a control population.

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Speaker 1: So traditional turbines you said kill about twenty percent of

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Speaker 1: the fish that pass through them. What percent of the

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Speaker 1: fish that passed through your turbine are killed by the.

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Speaker 2: Turbine less than two percent. So we have done tests

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Speaker 2: that have one hundred percent survival, so zero fish die.

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Speaker 1: So you got your turbine. It doesn't kill fish. And

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Speaker 1: by the way, how does it compare in terms of efficiency?

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Speaker 1: How is it at generating power compared to comparable turbines.

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Speaker 2: Similar So it's not the case where we can always

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Speaker 2: say that there is no trade off. Some of the

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Speaker 2: most efficient hydroturbines out there, you know, approach efficiencies of

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Speaker 2: ninety four ninety five percent. I think right now we

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Speaker 2: top out at around ninety three percent. So for the

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Speaker 2: most efficient, there will be some turbines that are a

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Speaker 2: little bit more efficient. However, when you think about prioritization

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Speaker 2: of fish passage, and you think about a very efficient turbine,

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Speaker 2: but now you need to put a screen in front

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Speaker 2: of it, you end up with net net delivered cost

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Speaker 2: of energy relative to fish safe performance is definitely better

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Speaker 2: when you can pass fish safely through a turbine, even

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Speaker 2: if it's ninety three percent instead of ninety four percent efficient.

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Speaker 1: So you got your turbine. It works. Where are your

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Speaker 1: turbines in the world today generating energy?

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Speaker 2: Today? We have three projects installed, one in Oregon, one

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Speaker 2: in Maine, and one in Austria.

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Speaker 1: And are these like pilots? Are these like big utility scale?

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Speaker 1: Are they like? What is the nature of these three?

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Speaker 2: They're commercial installations. They are generating electricity connected to the grid.

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Speaker 2: We're looking at things in Virginia, in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Switzerland, France,

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Speaker 2: and now most recently up in Ontario, and I should

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Speaker 2: be very clear, these are all deals that we're working

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Speaker 2: on that are not yet closed with a couple of

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Speaker 2: different utilities. So I think what we are I think

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Speaker 2: really at an interesting tipping point from a commercial perspective,

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Speaker 2: where the industry is finally realizing that there is a

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Speaker 2: way to upgrade all of these old assets, maintain or

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Speaker 2: actually improve in some cases the power output simply because

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Speaker 2: we're replacing really old turbans with new turbans, and the

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Speaker 2: new turbines are higher performance and do so without killing fish.

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Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, our value proposition

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Speaker 2: simply is, if you're going to spend billions of dollars

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Speaker 2: on equipment that's going to run for forty or fifty years,

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Speaker 2: and you could put in a conventional machine which will

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Speaker 2: kill fish, or a machine that is not going to

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Speaker 2: kill fish, why would you not choose the machine that

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Speaker 2: is not going to kill fish.

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Speaker 1: Are there regulatory requirements that make it that sort of

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Speaker 1: push utilities towards choosing your turbine? I mean, is it

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Speaker 1: like if they don't choose your turbine, then they have

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Speaker 1: to put in a really fine screen and it's going

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Speaker 1: to be worse for them anyways, that's correct.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I think where we're seeing the most immediate uptake

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Speaker 2: is places where there are regulations for safe passage which

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Speaker 2: require either of putting in a screen with a bypass,

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Speaker 2: so you generally are reducing energy because you're putting more

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Speaker 2: water around the turbine instead of through in addition to

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Speaker 2: the screen, which adds to costs, or in some cases

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Speaker 2: you're having to shut down at night for three or

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Speaker 2: four or five months out of the year while fish

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Speaker 2: are moving. Things like that.

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Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute to discuss gia's long

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Speaker 1: term problem. Once you fix turbines, what about dams? How

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Speaker 1: do you put a dam in a river without messing

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Speaker 1: up the ecosystem? Part of the answer, It turns out

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Speaker 1: you ask yourself what would beavers do. There's another problem

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Speaker 1: with hydro power, right, which is the dams themselves mess

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Speaker 1: up river ecosystems, and a turbine that doesn't kill fish

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Speaker 1: doesn't solve that, right, or it doesn't solve it entirely.

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Speaker 1: What are you going to do about that one?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think the answer is multi layered, and

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Speaker 2: in general our view is that there are certain existing

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Speaker 2: dams today that make sense to be removed. That's a

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Speaker 2: position that and in general I would say that you'll

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Speaker 2: find that to be a position across the industry. They're

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Speaker 2: just are in some cases stuff that we built, maybe

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Speaker 2: even one hundred years ago that just don't make sense

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Speaker 2: to keep in in today. And they should be right.

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Speaker 1: And it's a basic cost benefit, like it's a high

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Speaker 1: ecological cost, it's not generating that much power, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's not the basic calculus.

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Speaker 2: Or it's also just a high operations cost. So it's

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Speaker 2: a combination of commercial and environmental factors driving the decision making.

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Speaker 2: So the next layer after dam removal is what we

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Speaker 2: think of as reconfiguration. So if I have an existing project,

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Speaker 2: it makes sense to stay in economically it's a good,

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Speaker 2: good asset. But maybe there are some things that I

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Speaker 2: can do in addition to putting in fish safe turbines

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Speaker 2: that will improve the upstream passage by having a better

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Speaker 2: bypass or a more naturalistic upstream passage zone for example.

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Speaker 1: Those are reasonable, But you have this big dream. Tell

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Speaker 1: me about that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So the big dream is what we call restoration hydro,

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Speaker 2: which is to go full stop in taking the lessons

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Speaker 2: learned from river restoration over the last couple decades take

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Speaker 2: inspiration from nature's engineers, which are beavers, which do build dams.

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Speaker 2: And what's fascinating when you look at beavers is that

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Speaker 2: you can find beaver dams that are very large, hundreds

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Speaker 2: of feet long, fifteen feet high. You can find beaver

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Speaker 2: dams that have been around for a century, can be

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Speaker 2: very persistent. And what's interesting when you look at those

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Speaker 2: structures is they actually have very positive impacts on the

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Speaker 2: river ecosystem with respect to groundwater recharge. They slow water

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Speaker 2: runoff down that helps get war water into the ground,

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Speaker 2: that helps to benefit the water table. They create more habitat,

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Speaker 2: more diverse habitat around in that particular part of the

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Speaker 2: river reach, which is beneficial for FIT. So the big

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Speaker 2: picture dream is to is to take is basically a

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Speaker 2: nature based approach to thinking about rethinking hydro, certainly for

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Speaker 2: new build projects, but potentially also for reconfiguring more dramatically

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Speaker 2: existing projects.

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Speaker 1: I get that beavers are cool, like beavers are indeed amazing,

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Speaker 1: but I don't think I get exactly. I mean, are

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Speaker 1: you just saying we should build dams like beavers? Like

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Speaker 1: I don't really understand practically.

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Speaker 2: Building dams that fit what you mean. Yeah, The concept

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Speaker 2: behind restoration hydro is to realize that what we see

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Speaker 2: in rivers today is not the way rivers actually were

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Speaker 2: in their natural state. The rivers in their natural state

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Speaker 2: two hundred years ago in North America were full of logjams,

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Speaker 2: woody debris, beaver dams, all sorts of barriers to flow.

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Speaker 2: Those barriers helped mitigate floods because you si water run

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Speaker 2: off down across the landscape. They helped drive groundwater recharge.

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Speaker 2: They have a whole bunch of.

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Speaker 1: Ben that's cool. So like when we picture a river

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Speaker 1: and we just picture it free flowing, that's actually not

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Speaker 1: natural either. That is the product of some amount of

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Speaker 1: human intervention.

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Speaker 2: A huge amount of reream is intervention for navigation for

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Speaker 2: all sorts of reasons. Right, we want to be able

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Speaker 2: to drive a boat straight through the river.

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Speaker 1: So the dream is is you sort of get a

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Speaker 1: sense of what the natural dams might have been and

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Speaker 1: build those and generate power from them. Like that's the dream.

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Speaker 2: That's the dream, And the reality, of course, is that

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Speaker 2: it's going to be one step back from that, because

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Speaker 2: you know, we live in an existing built infrastructure with

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Speaker 2: a lot of stuff that we have to adapt. But

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Speaker 2: I think that that is a pathway that we feel

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Speaker 2: pretty strongly we're going to have to go down anyway

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Speaker 2: in the context of climate change, because if we look

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Speaker 2: at the increase in extreme weather events and precipitation events,

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Speaker 2: both extreme floods and extreme droughts, the common problem is

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Speaker 2: we're getting too much or not enough water in the

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Speaker 2: you know.

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Speaker 1: At the wrong given moment, right.

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Speaker 2: And so what dams do, whether they're man made or natural,

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Speaker 2: is help to spread water out across time and across space,

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Speaker 2: and that is going to be a critical part of

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Speaker 2: adapting to climate change, which we are going to have

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Speaker 2: to do. We have a certain amount of climate change

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Speaker 2: embedded in our atmosphere today, we are seeing it already,

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Speaker 2: and so the view for us around restoration hydros, it's

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Speaker 2: a way to start to blend this future of how

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Speaker 2: do we deal with climate change from a water resource

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Speaker 2: management perspective with also adding to the renewable energy supply.

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Speaker 1: It's cool, It's a cool it's a cool way of

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Speaker 1: thinking about the world that I had not thought of before.

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Speaker 1: So I appreciate it's fun to have a new way

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Speaker 1: of thinking about the world.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that this is critical for

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Speaker 2: us in general, for everyone who's working to tackle the

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Speaker 2: clean energy transition, because if you think about what we're doing,

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Speaker 2: we are basically replacing fossil fuel resource extraction with something else,

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Speaker 2: and that something else is not necessarily a world that

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Speaker 2: is biodiverse. It's a world like I can fully imagine

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Speaker 2: a world where we have made the clean energy transition.

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Speaker 2: We are using when sun and water and geothermal energy

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Speaker 2: to power all of our energy needs, but in the

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Speaker 2: process of doing that, we have mined the earth massively.

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Speaker 2: We have huge industrial scale build out of everything, and

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Speaker 2: that's a world that is not necessarily very biodiverse, but

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Speaker 2: is powered by clean energy. And so I think that

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Speaker 2: the one of the other reasons why I find hydro

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Speaker 2: interesting is because hydro has one hundred years of history

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Speaker 2: dealing with and thinking about and having lessons learned of

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Speaker 2: how how can we we can do renewable energy one

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Speaker 2: way that has a big negative environmental impact, or we

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Speaker 2: can embed criteria that prioritizes biodiversity and environmental criteria. And

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Speaker 2: we need to think about that not just for hydro,

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Speaker 2: but for batteries, for solar, for wind, et cetera. Across

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Speaker 2: the board.

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Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round

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Speaker 1: for almost done, but first we have to do a

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Speaker 1: lightning round, which is just a lot of questions somewhat

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Speaker 1: more random than the other questions I've asked you so far.

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Speaker 1: For example, what's one thing you missed about Texas where

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Speaker 1: you grew up.

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Speaker 2: The farm, being on a farm?

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Speaker 1: Is it right that you lived in a cabin that

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Speaker 1: your dad built like I sort of caught glimpses of that,

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Speaker 1: but what's the true story of that?

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Speaker 2: That is the truth. He drove to our Arkansas, brought

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Speaker 2: back logs and built the house in which I grew

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Speaker 2: up with the help of some local high school students,

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Speaker 2: and so that is actually true.

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Speaker 1: Where are the tacos better Texas or California, Baja Mexico. Well, sure,

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Speaker 1: literally where fish tacos were invented.

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Speaker 2: I think both Sexes and California are fine. I've had,

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Speaker 2: I've had have equally great tacos in both both places.

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Speaker 1: What's one thing you learned from setting up the carbon

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Speaker 1: emissions trading tests at Credit SUEEE early in your career that.

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Speaker 2: It is possible to move policy in a direction that

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Speaker 2: supports environmental outcomes and aligns with the general like capitalist framework,

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Speaker 2: so it is possible to do that. It takes a

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Speaker 2: lot of thought, effort and care.

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Speaker 1: What's your favorite river, Oh, the McCloud, tell me about

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Speaker 1: the McLoud.

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Speaker 2: It is an amazing cold, like super cold water river

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Speaker 2: flows into Lake Shasta, and so unfortunately upstream migration is

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Speaker 2: blocked at Lake Shasta, and we're there. We go there

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Speaker 2: once a year, generally in the summers. It's a great

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Speaker 2: fishing trout fishing stream. It's just incredibly pristine, beautiful, just

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Speaker 2: a beautiful place.

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Speaker 1: Gia Schneider is the co founder and CEO of Nattel Energy.

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Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Edith Russolo and Gabriel Hunter Chang.

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Speaker 1: It was edited by Karen Chakerjie and engineered by Sarah Bruger.

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Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot FM.

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Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with

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Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.