In 2019 Tony Grassi, owner of The Mill at Freedom Falls, partnered with Natel to install the first Restoration Hydro Turbine, retrofitting a once-purposeless sawmill with enough power to meet the needs of the small community of Freedom, Maine.
Like Tony's Mill, there are hundreds of existing small dams in the United States that are no longer being used as a power source or were constructed for non-power purposes. By retrofitting them with FishSafe hydro turbines, Natel is working with communities to leverage the infrastructure they already have to generate new, clean energy that could deliver close to 10 percent of the country's energy demand, while restoring safe downstream fish passage.
The summer's heating up, but at Natel we're keeping things cool, and not only with shade structures and a cooling tower for the fish! Read our newsletter for a round up of our biggest updates from Q2.
A peer-reviewed paper written in conjunction with Alden Lab and published in the Journal of Ecohydraulics.