AGENDA

 

2024 Conference Schedule   

Monday, February 5, 2024
2:00-8:00 p.m. Exhibitor Setup 
1:00-4:30 p.m. Workshops

Small Hydro Workshop - Aspen Meeting Room - Click Here for Full Workshop Agenda

Fish Entrainment Studies Workshop - Cedar Meeting Room
Join researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Alden Lab as they create new tools for natural resources and stakeholder negotiations. Fish entrainment studies are a routine part of stakeholder negotiations and are typically conducted as desktop studies due to the high cost of field studies. The standard reference estimates are based on field data collected during a large number of hydropower relicensings back in the 1990’s. Researchers are looking to hear from attendees about more recent field studies with additional species or life stages, advances in mitigation and fish monitoring and telemetry technologies, and quantitative techniques for creating survival estimates with entrainment data. Discovery of new entrainment study data and importing it into the previous database is a relatively straightforward update, but there are a wide variety of other updates that could be done. This workshop will provide an overview of the existing data and desktop entrainment and turbine survival study methods, and elicit feedback to understand the hydropower community’s needs and uses for these data and analysis products.

4:30-8:30 p.m. NWHA Board Meeting

Tuesday, February 6
7:00 a.m. Registration, Welcome Coffee, Exhibit Hall Opens

8:00-8:45 a.m. Welcome: NWHA President, Alene Underwood
Jennifer Quan, Regional Administrator, NOAA Fisheries

08:45-10:00    Panel #1: Hydro’s Role in the Energy Transition
10:00-10:30    Networking Break
10:30-11:30    Panel #2: Howdy Neighbor! Getting to Know Your Regional Partners
11:30-12:30    Committee Meetings

Technical/Operations- Willow A
Legislative/Regulatory- Willow B
Small Hydro- Juniper
Communications- Madrona
Energy Transition- Cedar
Natural Resources- Aspen (Meeting Wednesday 9:00)

12:30-02:00    Lunch: Annual Membership Meeting, Pamela E. Klatt Award Presentation
02:30-04:30    Hiring for Hydro Career Fair - Foyer
02:00-03:00    
Panel #3: Pumped Storage Hydro – How Does it Compare to Other Energy Storage Technologies?
03:00-03:30    Networking Break
03:30-05:00    Panel #4: New Dam Safety FERC guidelines Chapters 15, 16, 17, and 18 – Case Studies and FERC Update
05:00-06:00    NWHA Sponsored Social:  Newcomers Welcome with NWHA Staff and Board- Foyer

Wednesday, February 7
8:30 a.m. Registration, Morning Coffee, Exhibit Hall Opens

9:00-10:00 a.m. Choose one of the following Sessions  
Panel #5 Automation, Cyber Security, and AI, OH MY! - Grand C
Panel #6 “Community” Engagement: Know Your Audience For Collaborative Decision-Making - Grand D

10:00-10:30 a.m. Networking Break

10:30-12:00 p.m. Choose one of the following Sessions    
Panel #7 Dam Safety: Big Project Impacts - Grand C
Panel #8 Regulatory Hot Topics - Grand D

12:00-1:30 p.m. Women in Hydro Lunch or Lunch with our Exhibitors

1:30-3:00 p.m. Choose one of the following Sessions
Panel #9 Hydro Projects: Why Do They Take So Long? (And How Can We Improve?) - Grand C
Panel #10 Navigating the Changes in the Hydropower Landscape - Grand D

3:00-3:30 p.m. Networking Break

3:30-4:30 p.m. Choose one of the following Sessions
Panel #11 Klamath Falls:  History, Engineering, Funding, and Decisions in the World’s Largest Dam Removal Project - Grand C
Panel #12 Powering the Future: A Fireside Chat on the Future Hydropower Workforce - Grand D

4:30-5:30 p.m. NWHA Hydro Happy Hour

5:30 p.m. Exhibit hall closes for the remainder of the conference. 

Thursday, February 8
8:00 a.m. Registration/Coffee

08:30-09:30    Panel #13 Licensing and Implementation- Using the Ecosystem Based Approach
09:30-10:00    Networking Break
10:00-11:00    Panel #14 Dimensions of Equity in the Hydro Industry
11:00-12:00    Panel #15 Cultural and Historical Resource Considerations in Hydro Relicensing and Operations
12:00-12:15    Closing Comments, Prizes, Adjourn