News and Events

Alison Colotelo, who leads the HydroPASSAGE project, has been selected for the Hydropower Foundation advisory board.

The HydroPASSAGE team presented a webinar on the tools offered through the DOE project. The tools include the Biological Performance Assessment (BioPA) toolset, The Hydropower Biological Evaluation Toolset (HBET), and Sensor Fish.

A team of PNNL researchers used Sensor Fish collect information about the physical experiences of fish as they pass through dams and provided data to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Walla Walla District, and the Bonneville Power Administration so they can improve turbine design and operations for safer fish passage.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Alison Colotelo is a Project Manager in the Ecology Group. She works with multi-disciplinary teams on the effects of hydropower development on fish.

Using PNNL’s autonomous fish body double called Sensor Fish, and the miniature version, Sensor Fish Mini—in its first field trial—the team found that the screen provides safe downstream passage for fish at irrigation structures. Testing also determined that Sensor Fish and Sensor Fish Mini are effective devices for evaluating irrigation structures and providing important information for the development of sustainable irrigation.

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are creating new technology that is being used all over the world to help engineers design improved versions of hydroelectric dams.

A trio of PNNL fish researchers recently published a video journal article on how to properly implant miniature acoustic tags in juvenile Pacific Lamprey and American Eel and how the tags could benefit migration.

During his doctorate work in southeastern Australia, Pflugrath examined weirs, or small dams built across rivers, and how they impact fish passage. His findings were recently published in the paper, “Over or under? Autonomous sensor fish reveals why overshot weirs may be safer than undershot weirs for fish passage,” in Ecological Engineering.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory published a paper in Renewable Energy, sharing their analyses of lightweight composite turbine blades versus the stainless-steel blades used in most low head reservoirs. The paper’s findings show the turbine with the composite blades generates about 20 percent more power than turbines with traditional stainless- steel blades at the same flow rate.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory performed an evaluation of a novel technology that helps migratory fish more safely and efficiently navigate upstream around hydroelectric dams.

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are now leading research to mitigate biofouling and its impacts on the environment and industry

Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have created look-alike fish to collect information on the impacts of fish swimming near dams.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory licenses its autonomous Sensor Fish technology to Advanced Telemetry Systems to analyze physical stressors that fish experience when passing through water and turbines at hydroelectric facilities.