NOVEMBER 2020

MEET HYDROPASSAGE'S JAYSON MARTINEZ

Jayson Martinez is one of the developers behind a HydroPASSAGE tool used to evaluate hydraulic characteristics and fish behavior at hydropower facilities and other hydraulic structures to guide improvements for downstream fish passage

Jayson, a mechanical engineer from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), developed the Hydropower Biological Evaluation Toolset (HBET) in 2016 with co-inventor Daniel Deng, the HydroPASSAGE technical lead for HBET and a PNNL Laboratory Fellow. HBET is a suite of software tools that relates data collected by field sensors, including the autonomous Sensor Fish, to biological response models to assess the relative risk of downstream fish passage at hydropower facilities. 

Jayson’s role in the HydroPASSAGE project has focused on the development and evaluation of the HBET and related sensing systems, as well as using his engineering expertise to support the study of hydropower’s biological impacts through field deployments, data collection, and analysis of PNNL-developed systems. 

“With this tool, you can look at historical data and use biological response relationships to relate the computed parameters to expected outcomes in different species of fish,” Jayson said. “It makes the sensor-based technologies developed by PNNL easier to use, easier to manage, and produces more comparable results between different studies.” 

 Information collected using HBET enables hydropower operators and hydropower turbine designers to identify risks from various physical stressors that may affect fish and develop alternatives to improve the biological performance of their designs or operations. The tool incorporates different biological response relationships, including rapid decompression, shear, and blade strike. 

 Learn more about Jayson here.  

STUDY: SENSOR FISH AND HBET GUIDE FISH FRIENDLY TURBINE DEVELOPMENT

The HydroPASSAGE technical team recently published research in the Journal of Cleaner Production on a study that shows that some small-scale siphon turbines with high rotational speeds could create hazardous environments for fish species that may be susceptible to rapid decompression and blade strike.  

Sensor Fish were used to characterize hydraulic conditions through a siphon turbine at the Head of the U Hydroelectric Project in Idaho. This hydropower facility was created by adding power generation to an irrigation canal when the previous structure needed repair. A siphon turbine develops a siphon that pulls the water that passes through the turbine up and over the structure of the dam. Sensor Fish were used to measure the nadir pressure, or lowest pressure, that occurs during passage through the turbine. Data were archived and analyzed using HBET to estimate the probability that fish could be affected by the observed conditions. The results demonstrated that the evaluated siphon turbine can result in lower nadir pressures than other turbines that don’t operate using a siphon structure. The research informs decision makers about the characteristics of specific turbines and any species-of-concern with respect to rapid decompression, like juvenile Chinook salmon, although the irrigation canal in this exploratory study does not have any species-of-concern present. Siphon turbines offer a cost-effective way to add power generation capabilities to existing non-powered structures. The study’s data can be used to help guide turbine selection, validate the design of existing turbines, or guide development of new fish-friendly designs. 

 Read more about the team’s findings here.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT HBET

HBET has specific computer system requirements: 

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

 HBET was designed for the following operating systems: 

• Windows 7 and higher

 HBET rquires SQL Server 2012 or newer. 

Read more FAQs about HBET here.

The HydroPASSAGE project is a research and development collaboration between engineers and biologists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest and Oak Ridge National Laboratories that is finding solutions to improve downstream fish passage conditions through turbines and other hydropower structures. Learn more at hydropassage.org.