OK, testing 12. good morning, everybody. This is Pravin Kharky from Washington DC. Um, we just finished the first session on international development trends. Um, it was a good session. We had government representatives from Nepal, Norway, Switzerland, and we had TNC, the Nature Conservancy, present and talk about international development trends. Uh, it's a great pleasure for me to now hand over the next session to Richard Taylor, um, who is going to moderate this session. Um, he's a former CEO of the International Hydropower Association. He's a fellow of Energy Institute UK, and this session is going to be very exciting and the topics that were brought up about technology in the first session. So over to you, Richard. Thank you. Thank you, uh, thank you very much, Pravin. I'm uh very, very pleased to, uh, introduce this session to you. Um, My opportunity today is to moderate a discussion around research and innovation, and I would like to recognize that we have a a a a really interesting cross section of uh organizations that are at the forefront of building knowledge and uh creating. New solutions to a rapidly changing world, especially in the electricity sector, and to focus in specifically about hydropower's contribution to the cleaner energy future that we are all looking towards. Uh, the first speaker I'd like to introduce now is, is, is Paolo Frankel. Uh, Dr. Frankel's got a, a long and established career, more than 30 years, uh, working on, uh, renewable energy systems and markets, life cycle assessments, and, uh, eco-labeling. Uh, Doctor Frankel is the head of the renewable energy division at the International Energy Agency, uh, which is, uh, he, he joined in 2007. Uh, he leads IAEA's work on renewables, providing analysis and policy advice for markets, system integration to more than 30 member countries of, um, of the agency and the partners, the many, many partners that contribute to the work of IEA. Over to you, Paulo. Thank you very much, uh, Richard, for the very kind introduction words. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's my pleasure today to share with you some of the recent work of the IA and put, uh, R&D and innovation in the broader context, um, of, of the, uh, uh, of the, um, can you, uh, can you just confirm that you're seeing my screen correctly? Yes, very good. So first, the drivers, modernization is first of all a necessity and then an opportunity. The necessity derives from the fact that 1/3 of today's installed capacity is more than 40 years old, and we sometimes tend to believe or to think that these existing assets will last forever. They will not if there is not proper operation and maintenance efforts, and what is the objective here is to prolong the lifetime of conflict and guaranteeing long term generation, but then the second is modernizing plants and optimize the production of hydropower system. Second point. Uh, the, the world will be increasingly dominated, the power systems by variable renewables, wind and solar, and hydropower. This will require much more flexibility in power systems. And hydropower can contribute to provide some of this system flexibility. The system flexibility as a whole will need at least 4 different dimensions, the power plants, the networks, so better grid and interconnections, the demand side response, and all forms of storage. Hydropower can contribute, of course, uh, to many forms of flexibility. Now, All this will need to be assessed country by country, not even country, system by system. And while the vast majority here in this graph, we have only 30 countries, but while the vast majority of the countries in the world have a share of variable renewables which is below or even well below 10%, We have some markets where the shares have increased a lot over time and all the shares everywhere will increase and will require new reforms, new market design to attract investment upscale in in flexibility. So, the innovation and innovative hydro technologies, but also innovative markets can optimize the hydropower contribution and I would broadly speaking, distinguish three main categories, categories. First, the advantages and the innovation that are coming from digitalizations. So, for instance, predictive maintenance and automated control system. And here, obviously, the goal is to increase overall performance, overall efficiency of the plant. And reduce maintenance costs. Second, to transform hydro from the old role of a base load producer to a much more flexible uh technology that can cope with the fast ramp up and ramp down and also with the lack of power sometimes uh of variable renewables, wind and solar. So, this will, uh will need new technologies or let's say new applications of all technologies. The third point that I would like to do to say is that innovation is not just in technologies. It has to be also new regulatory framework and new market designs because we know very well that hydro can provide some ancillary markets or even storage in energy, but in some cases, the remuneration is not there. So this is absolutely a must. Now, The other week we, the IA published the sustainable recovery Plan. Basically this covers 30 measures across all fuels, all technologies, demand and supply. What I show here is only the electricity supply. Overall, it's a plan for $3 trillion over 3 years, uh which would protect, create 9 million jobs, uh, uh, boost the economy at least by 1.1% of GDP per year and avoid 4.5%. Tons of gigatons of CO2 over the three years relegating 2019 in history of the year when emissions, when the world's CO2 emissions peaked. Now, what is important here is to say is that hydro plays an important role. It would create tens of thousands of skilled jobs, bring $20 billion US dollars per year of investment opportunities, and of course, it would save money actually because the crucial point is that hydropower, in particular, repowering and modernization has abatement costs that are lower than other options um uh comparing to hydro. So let me conclude this very brief. Brief introduction just to show you how a few things uh of the recent IEA work which has dramatically stepped up, I would say in an unprecedented way since the 2012 work on the hydropower roadmap that we did jointly with Brazil. We first had a workshop uh uh in February looking at three, the three different topics of green field, existing asset management and system flexibility. The hydropower played a major role in the market report update that we published in May and you could see for those who are aware with this report, uh, the big hand uh that hydro gives in, in our forecast to the rebound of renewables and the renewable energy market report will continue to have a focus on hydropower. This will be, however, shifted into the first half of 2021. Now the technology collaboration program of IAA hydropower Annex 9 had a specific workshop on valuing hydropower flexibility and the relation in evolving electricity market, making a mapping of the products of flexibility and how they are remunerated or not. remunerated in different markets. Recently, in a a very nice event organized by the virtual event, of course, organized by the International Hydropower Association, our executive director Dr. Biro discussed with 11 hydro industry CEOs and senior officials on the need for a sustainable recovery. Another report uh came to the light very recently, which is on climate impacts of hydropower in Africa. And last but certainly not least, uh, the, the sustainable recovery plan that identifies an important role of hydro, and this will also inform the IEA Clean Energy Transition summit that will be held in in virtually on the 9th of July. I thank you for your attention and I stop here and of course I welcome any questions. Thank you. And I'm trying to, yes, to stop the slides. That's very kind of you. Thank you, uh, very much, uh, Paulo. Um, we will be coming back to the Q&A session after the presentations. Uh, the next, uh, to, uh, bring us a message is, uh, Doctor Gulf, Gulf, uh, Gillen. He is, um, uh, representing the International Renewable Energy Agency. Uh, before joining IRENA, uh, he has, uh, worked, uh, with, uh, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation and indeed, uh, with the International Energy Agency. Um, Doctor Gillen is the, is the director of, uh, Irena's Innovation and Technology Center, uh, in Bonn and has held that position since, uh, 2011. So I, I now would be, um, very pleased to hand the floor to you, Dolph, uh, for your, your comments. Yeah, thank you very much, uh, Richard. Um, I've also, uh, prepared a few slides, see if I can share these. Yes, we can see them. We can see them. OK, good. So, uh, the, um, The, uh, today, we released the, uh the Irena report, Post-COVID Recovery, An Agenda for Resilience, Development and Equality. Uh, so that report does two things. It, it, it links the stimulus, uh, to the, uh, long term energy transition needs. And, uh, second, it puts the investment opportunities in the context of SDGs. And through these two, through these two angles, we come to some, uh, what I think are, are, are some interesting conclusions. Um, The Um, one of the points is that, uh, while we talk in, in the, in the current context about, uh, the, uh, investment needs, there's also a key role for the, uh, enabling frameworks. So, uh, by, uh, adjusting these, we can remove some key barriers and uh accelerate, uh, uh, investments. And in the case of, of hydro, uh, that is much needed because the hydro growth. Last year, according to the arena statistics, um, there was growth, but it was only a 1% growth. And we need more growth and as, as Paulo already pointed out, we also need more attention for the refurbishment of the existing hydro plants. Now the role of hydro is changing as the share of variable renewables is increasing. And that has implications. It has implications for the type of hydro plants we need. It has also implications for the way how we operate these plants, and therefore implications for the way how we design these plants. So, That is an important component in research innovation context we're talking about today. And also, um, the, the use of these, these plants is changing. For example, floating PV is being introduced uh on existing uh uh hydro reservoirs, and we see even pumped hydro in desert conditions, uh, today, so. Uh, uh, a lot of innovation in a sector which is, is, uh, generally considered to be mature. Um, we, uh, track these things. Uh, we, uh, issued our innovation landscape report last year which outlines how we look at, at, at how to, how to manage that integration of high share variable renewables. Uh, our, our gene power generation cost report, uh, from April, uh, has the latest data on, on hydro. So commissioned projects last year $4.7 per kilowatt hour on average. Uh, the, the cost has slightly been increasing over the last decade, so that's a little bit different from, from PV and wind. We've actually seen sharp cost reductions. And I mentioned, uh, we see that, that, uh, there's a lot of innovation and, uh, we will soon come with an innovation brief on, on pumped hydro. Now, apart from these knowledge projects, uh, products, we work on the outreach. So we had a ministerial plenary at, in January, at, at, uh, at our 10th assembly, and last week, we had the first meeting of the collaborative framework on hydropower. Two slides with insights from these meetings. So, uh, as mentioned, uh, the, the ministerial meeting, there are some concerns around hydro slowing down and, and the need to, to look at what's changing, uh, power sector structure means for hydropower assets. Um, also, uh, there is a clear recognition that market structures and business models need to be adapted to this new, uh, uh, environment, and that there is a lot of, uh, services that hydropower can provide which are currently not rewarded. So that is one of the issues. How do you, how do you, uh, can, can, can value that. So, uh, the cooperation platform, it's, it's one of, uh, uh, 5 cooperation platforms we're currently starting. Um, it's intended as a dialogue among our, uh, our members on, uh, uh, issues of common interest. Uh, it's, um, it's, it's not so much about the R&D side, it's more about the, the, uh, deployment side of things. Uh, and, uh, a number of key areas where the members asked us to, to, to develop their activities is around, uh, the, uh, these new operational regimes, uh, the issue of, uh, the changing role of pumped hydro, the opportunities of digitalization. For this this changing hydro operation and and role. Uh, there was also a lot of interest for hydropower, for hydrogen and other, uh, types of, of, of sector coupling opportunities, and of course, the need for changing and enabling frameworks and what is best practices in, in this context. And finally, uh, the management of national and international catchment, uh, uh, catchment areas and, and, and hydro cascades. So, Uh, in a nutshell, uh, we see a bright future for hydro, but we will need a lot of, uh, of, of innovation to make that happen, and, uh, we will continue to strengthen and work with our members on this. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, uh, Dolph. That's uh um a, a very, um Intense snapshot of the work that the International Renewable Energy Agency is doing, and there are some new initiatives which I think will help with this changing role for hydropower. Both Dolf and the previous speaker Paolo have talked about this. This combination of understanding better the technologies and the needs of our future systems that are very much renewables driven and also the alignment that that will require with markets and I think this is this is something that we will rely very heavily on on agencies to bridge that that dialogue about what these technologies look like, what do they cost, what's their benefits, and how should they be incentivized. So we'll come back to that, I'm sure in the Q&A. I'd like now to pass to Dr. Han Huang, who is the deputy director general of the Economic and Technology Research Department of GICO. Now Guideco is the Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization. Dr. Huang has been involved in this initiative, I think pretty much from the start. He is in addition, To his role in, in the, in the organization. He is a senior member of the Chinese Society for Electrical Engineering and also a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. He's a member of the Tau Beta Pi Society and a special expert to China's state grid organization. So, um, uh, Doctor Huang, uh, it's, uh, my pleasure now to, to give you the floor to let us know, um, what, uh, GICo's innovation, uh, work has, uh, doing, especially in relation to hydropower. Over to you. To return. Under control Yeah, we can see you, thank you. OK, thank you. Just one second. Uh, good morning, everyone. Uh, on behalf of Global Energy Interconnection Development and the Cooperation Organization, you know, I would like to Uh, thank the host for inviting us to attend this webinar. Uh, my name is Han Huang, and the topic of my presentation today is hydro, uh, power, um, accelerates clean transition and promotes new energy development. Well, I have 5 parts in total. Um, I've introduced a little bit about Gato, the group, and also the, uh, GI concept. Um, as well as the latest research work from Geico site. Um, and, uh, also I would like to take a little bit of time to, uh, introduce the GEI development and the cooperation platform, uh, as an effective way for cooperation. Uh, of, of course, um, call you join, and at the last, I would like to share, uh, some recommendations. Well, Gato, um, Is, uh, was established in March 2016. Our purpose is to promote the building of global energy interconnection, uh, to meet the global electricity demand in a clean and green way. Uh, our chairman, uh, Mr. Liu J Ya is the chairman of the China Electricity Council, and we have 4 vice chairmen from China, from the United States, from Japan, and Russia, um, with, uh, utility, uh, research, and, uh, financing background. Well, our headquarters has over 225 official staff. Um, among them, 98% has master's and doctorate degree. Um, the research institute I'm working on has about 65 researchers and include the, uh, topic about climate change and environment, uh, energy and power, marketing, technology, and power grid planning. As well as economic and social affairs. Uh, currently, uh, GEICO has about 860 members from 115 countries in 6 continents covering almost all the energy industry chain all over the world, and we have 7 regional office office and uh 62 country representative offices in 6 continents. Uh, let me very brief, uh, talk about the GEI concept. Actually, GEI is, um, energy system. It's a clean energy dominant, of course, hydropower will play a very important role in it. And also it's electricity centric. We all know the renewable energy, majority of renewable energy, especially solar and wind, uh, must be transferred into electricity, uh, uh, to be used. And it's a modern energy system um with a globally connected and also um Virtually beneficial to all and actually it's a platform when we talk about renewable, it must be a system. So it's a platform system for large scale development, uh, transmission, and the consumption of clean energy resources in worldwide. So in the south side is clean energy and they use ultra high voltage transmission line as the backbone and with the smart grid at the low side to have the flexible capability to have the renewable. So, um, in the picture you see in the, uh, left corner, um, we have, uh, together with UNDESA to host a high-level meeting at UN headquarter, uh, to release a report about GEI implementation, uh, 2030 agenda. Uh, Mr. Antonio Guterres, uh, rated the GEI strategy, uh, very high. Uh, some of our latest research work so far we have finished more than 100 studies in global energy matters in the past 4 years. Around 40 of them have been officially released. Uh, Currently, we have completed the top-level design of energy interconnection system globally and continentally. Uh, we call it the 1 + 6 report series. Uh, for the research and outlook on the uh Global energy interconnection has been complied and published in December 2019, uh, officially launched at COP 25. Um, hydropower, we all know, is the key topic of the renewable, uh, will, will play a very significant role in the global energy interconnection. While the theoretical potential of global hydropower resources is about 29 watt hour per year and only 27 has been exported. So Gao has proposed a 15 large-scale hydropower bases globally with the total installed capacity of 880 gigawatts by 2025 and 1.3 terawatts by 2050, which will provide a reliable, uh, reliable power supply and strongly support new energy development through much energy complementation, uh, in a water range. So, um, now I will just put two examples, one in the, um, Africa, one in South America. In the, uh, African energy interconnection, uh, Gao has started and proposed the interregional Congo River hydropower transmission at a scale of 885 gigawatts, uh, to east, uh, west, north, and South Africa. Um, to realize, uh, cross-seal, uh, cross-regional, and across, uh, temporal, uh, complementation with large-scale solar and wind power development in these regions. So the technical report has been published by Springer. Uh, if you're interested on it, I would like to be more than happy, uh, to provide it, uh, the link. Uh, the other example I would like to show is for South America, uh, by leveraging inter-basin complement, uh, complementarity among major river basins, uh, the overall ratio of the wet, uh, to dry season discharges could be reduced to 5.2, uh, from 5.1 or 4.1, uh, each for each river. In Brazil, uh, when we see the hydropower, solar and wind power, um, they are together has very strong, uh, complementary features as shown in the diagrams, you will see on the right side. By using ultra high voltage building up the backbone grid, South America energy interconnection could maximize utilizing the region uh renewable energy potential. Well, for interest in uh further uh collaboration, I'd like to introduce the GEI Development and cooperation platform, where it's designed to integrate the resources and bridge the gap from a broad range of users from the uh state governments, uh, to enterprises and to uh financing institutes, think tanks, think tanks, and the industry associations. To see more project opportunity and research cooperation opportunity, um, in the web web tap platform. Uh, the platform brings experts and talents to help with project-oriented policy analysis, uh, engineering design, financing solution, and other services, uh, equipping our users to grow and lead, um, you know, with the online communication. Uh, to get, uh, brand, uh, promotion and, uh, marketing, uh, have users expand business network and draw, uh, followers worldwide. Uh, uh, you see from here, uh, this picture isn't, this is, uh, too many information, but your summary, the plat platform, uh, will take advantages of GEICO's, uh, rich resources, uh, in networking, uh, cooperating, cooperation, uh, research, and project promotion. Well, for promoting projects, for example, uh, the platform will gather this information for evaluating, uh, before they provided the platform. Uh, through online and offline promotion, the platform will complete its project matching process based on participants agreed. And uh, the platform is scheduled to be launched in September 2020. Uh, of course, I will call you uh to work together on this. So at the end, I would like to share three recommendations. One is, uh, let's strong consensus on the significance of hydropower to the economy, to society development, and also for the clean energy transition to get a favorable international environment for the hydropower development. Secondly, uh, let's create an innovative development concept. Uh, joint study, transregional and uh cross-basin collaborative development planning of hydropower and other renewable energies. Get the large-scale application for the uh clean energy. Thirdly, uh, let's create an innovative international cooperation mechanisms. To construct uh energy consumption market, uh, establish new investment modes to obtain, uh, assisting financial support to promote construction of hydropower and the interconnection project. Oh, please, uh, see, uh, my email address here. Uh, if you have any further questions or request, uh, please contact me and thank you. Uh, I wish everyone and your family members with good health. Sorry, I'm probably a little bit longer, but, um, you know, I think that I'm from really far away. Thank you. Up here. Thank you very much, and, uh, Doctor Huang, your, your, um, your presentation broke up a, uh, uh, a little on the, uh, YouTube, um. Uh, broadcast, so we'll make sure that we make your presentation available to those parties that have joined us, uh, which includes the reference, uh, that you have for your own contact and also the publications that you cited. And uh thank you also for your offer of collaboration. I think this is um Really, really important that, uh, we join up the research and innovation that is, uh, being, uh, carried out around the world. We've heard about some of it. We're about to hear about some more, and I think that we can, um, accelerate this progress if we, um, do follow this, uh, the collaboration as you're suggesting. So thank you, thank you again for that. So, now I'd like to turn to our next speaker who is uh Alejandro Moreno. Uh, he is the director of the Water Power Technologies Office of the US Department of Energy. Um, he has a long career in working with renewable energy, and prior to working or between times of working with the US government, he has also served with the World Bank and the International Financing Corporation, uh, where he's been involved with regulatory reform programs to spur investment into clean energy. So, uh, without further ado, Alejandro, I'd like to, uh, give you the floor. Terrific. Thanks, Richard, and can everybody see my screen now? It's just taking a moment. OK, I know we're having some, some delays on my side so if if the delays become too long, feel free to jump in and um. Terrific, and, and interrupt me. Um, thank you, Richard, for the, for the introduction and, and to Praveen and, and your entire team for, for the opportunity to speak and setting up this, this conversation. I think it's, it's really striking and really encouraging how similar and consistent the messages that we're getting from across the world are. And that's certainly been something I've noticed over the last few years in this position, um. As Richard said, my name is Alejandro Moreno. I'm the director of the Water Power Technologies Office in the US Department of Energy. And this is the department that covers all of the department's hydropower research, as well as our marine energy research. I won't talk about the latter today. If you're interested, by all means, uh, contact me. Um, a quick word about the US Department of Energy because it is a little bit different than other energy ministries for, for those who don't know. Uh, we really do have a focus on research and development. We don't, uh, we don't, we're not a policy organization. We don't do energy system planning. Um, but our role really in, in that way is, is in a way to look into the future and, and specifically to invest in science and technology that will pave the way for the power system of the future. Um, obviously, Um, if we really knew the future, we wouldn't be working for government, but in the energy sector, I, I would say one thing is very clear right now, and, and you've heard this before, but, but certainly we can't rely on the past as a guide for, for the future. The power system is changing pretty, pretty substantially. Um, there are a lot of open questions into what the power system of the future will look like. Um, ah, and, and certainly that will, you know, these depend on, um, the, the penetration of variable renewables, the extent to which decentralization becomes, you know, a, a major factor, uh, and these are going to differ power system to power system, they're going to differ country to country, um, and there are a lot of differing opinions even within the US of what, of what the future is gonna look like, um. But I think the trends are really clear, obviously. Uh, we have very, very low cost wind and solar, um, we have technologies now that are increasing really quickly that allow us to communicate and control assets, many dispersed assets as a fleet. Um, and if we're not planning for a future that looks a lot more like that, we're, we're unlikely to be planning for the most cost-effective portfolio and the, the most cost-effective, um, system, uh, both from a generation and a transmission and, and a load side, um. And, you know, what does this mean? Um, hopefully you can see I'm, I'm, I've just switched to the, the slide on different grid services from hydropower. Ah, the future, as you've heard, is really about flexibility. Flexibility in all parts of the system. Um, and as I think many of us know, hydropower is one of the technologies that can provide the most flexibility of all generation technologies on the system, at least reservoir hydro. Um, certainly among all, all renewables. This, this here is a graph from PJM, which is the large interconnect in the mid-Atlantic where the World Bank sits in the US showing the ability of, of hydro, coal, and natural gas. These are the three top technologies in, in terms of providing different grid services and flexibility. Um, and you can see hydro basically is the best. Hydro can provide just about everything, um. And that's even more so when you consider pumped storage. Just one example, the department has a big research initiative. It's called ARPAE, which is, you know, it's based on a long-standing Defense Department of Defense research program that right now has a long duration storage solicitation out looking for new technologies to provide 10 to 100 hours of continuous storage. And basically the way they frame it is it's pumped storage just without the site restrictions. And so I think everybody recognizes the value that pumped storage has, has to play, um, and hydro as well, and certainly as you go to really high renewable futures, um, you end up with this, this capability of what's increasingly being called firm flexible resources, such as natural gas or hydro, and hydro is really the only one of those that are, that are renewable. Um, But, you know, the, I think the, the flip side here is, you know, in order to maximize that value and, and, and to realize that value, as you've heard, both hydro and pump storage are gonna have to be operated quite differently than what we've seen in the past. Um, for hydropower, that means you'll have more facilities providing loads um load following and, and responding quickly for frequency response, frequency regulation. Um, and even those that have always operated in that way, like the graph you see on the left from a project in the Midwest of the US, they're going to be changing modes or for pump sturge I should say. They'll be ramping up and down and starting and stopping much more frequently and responding much more quickly throughout the lifetime of the project. And this, this plant here went after an ancillary services market was put in place, went from starting and stopping a few times a week to over 200 times a week. same thing of course is true for pump storage. You heard this from from Paolo and Dolph a little bit. I'll say my first recollection of this or my first recognition of this was actually in Switzerland. We heard from the Swiss this morning at their Lindt Limmer plant, which I visited at about 2 p.m. on a on a sunny afternoon. Afternoon and it was pumping a full 2 gigawatts, which for if you're familiar with pumped storage, that's almost unheard of. Pump storage was built to pump at night when energy was cheap and generate during the day, and now that's being flipped almost completely on its head. You see a graph here similarly from the US and California, um, the Helms project, which now pumps more frequently during the day than at night, and of course that's because of the solar concentration in, in California. This is also hiding a lot of the quick response similar to what you see on the graph on the left that now all pump storage projects are seeing increasingly. Um, moving on and just recognizing that that kind of operation, it, it has potential value, but it also has potential implications. Um, and some of those are really obvious to things like turbine design. You need to design a turbine that's gonna operate at great efficiency. across a much broader operating range. Obviously more faster response is likely to both increase your overall wear and tear but change the rate at which different components wear out. So I think Paulo mentioned this, but your predictive maintenance algorithms need to change. Um, some are less obvious, things like the environmental trade-offs. Um, certainly if the value from hydropower is going to come more from the flexibility, well, that means a priority on using water in different ways than has been done before and in ways that weren't typically built into some of the initial studies or the initial license agreements. Um, also in terms of modeling system benefits, um, a lot of the both the planning models and the operational models don't represent the speed of, of flexibility that often will be needed for the power system of the future. And needless to say, then converting that into market products in many regions in the US and in Western Europe that have real-time power markets is is is a big challenge, and we, we've heard that this morning as well. Um, and so part of the work that the DOE is doing, we have a research program that we've called Hydrowires. We need a fancy acronym, and we've divided this problem into a few parts. And the first is really understanding what the grid will need. This is technology neutral, but understanding what are the different drivers for different types of flexibility and capabilities. The second is looking at the capabilities and the constraints on the existing hydro fleet. That's a combination of the technology itself, the turbine, the infrastructure with the inflow regime, the water itself, and then the institutional restrictions that every hydro plant operates under, both both environmental restrictions, but also trade-offs with water use for irrigation. In agriculture and, and drinking water. Um, then we try to combine those and try to understand how different plants can be optimized, uh, given those constraints and given the needs in, in the system they're likely to face, uh, and then develop technologies and, and continue to, to, to focus our technology R&D to be aligned with that future optimization. Um, some of the type of work this is a very, you know, the next slide is a very small, uh, example of, of the work we're doing, but this leads to things like, um, new evaluation, guidance, and, and tools for, for large scale home storage, um, better use of data, which now we have the, the really large high-speed computing assets at our national laboratories that can take vast reams of data and start to make intelligent, um, Inferences about how, for example, different types of operating regimes for different types of turbines in different conditions are likely to affect the wear and tear rates of different components. Um, also improving the representation of hydropower and all flexibility in power system models, both in production cost models, the dispatch models, as well as the longer term capacity expansion models. Then you see on the right an example of some of the, we have a small example of the types of reports that that we're working on. Um, one note, this project is very closely aligned with the X-wife Hydro program that in Europe that Elena will talk about next, and we do work closely with them to to leverage each other's work. Um, one other, uh, international collaboration I did want to highlight, we're working with IHA to stand up an international forum, specifically on pub storage. Hydro, uh, again, given many of the, the synergies and, uh, and the alignment of international research. Um, efforts. This will cover a lot of the type of, of needs that you heard both Paulo and Dolph talk about. It will be aligned with the, the hydro initiative that, that Dolph mentioned, really focused again on, on the value that hydro provides and, and sorry, pump storage provides in, in this case, and how do we both understand and plan for that value and optimize for that value in the future power system and provide the right tools for. For market operators to um uh to be able to design financial products to compensate for it. Um, that's my last slide before I, I turn it over. I do want to just also give a plug to two topics that have been mentioned a lot today and they are very important to DOE as well. One is digitization. That is something that that's related to the data effort I, I spoke about. Um, and the other is environmental sustainability. Um, it is absolutely critical that if hydropower is going to be considered a solution for a part of the solution for a renewable dominated future, that it, it is seen as an environmental net benefit. Um, DOE works on a lot of technologies to continue to improve the environmental performance of both, um, hydropower and pump storage, and, and without doing that, if that underpins all of the other efforts from our perspective. So with that, I'll turn it back over to you, Richard. Thank you. Thank you very much, Alejandro. Um, yeah, 22 good, uh, segues there. Um, one, the next presentation, uh, which, uh, I'll, I'll mention in a minute, and, uh, the next session, uh, which is, uh, is dealing with, uh, sustainability, uh, uh, climate, and, and safety, uh, aspects. So, um, I think that we, uh, will continue the conversation. About the, the, the benefits and disbenefits of changed operating regimes and different designs, choices that we have about hydro. Um, I'd now like to invite uh Eleanor. Uh, Doctor Eleanor Benoni is, um, Uh, the scientific project manager for the XFlex Hydro project, which is, um, has already been referenced by others, uh, in, in the, in the sessions and speaking in this session. Um, I, um, uh, should introduce Eleanor as someone who has, um, got a, a really fascinating challenge, which is to get, uh, 19 institutions to uh join up their thinking and and deliver a 4 year project on what the future, uh, investment should be in, uh, flexible hydropower technology. Um, this project, uh, uh, began, uh, at the, uh, towards the latter part of, of last year. It's a, um, a, a really interesting, uh, project with, uh, European Union support. It's, uh, it's well resourced, and I'll let her explain much more eloquently than I can, um, about what we're hoping to achieve with this project. So over to you, Eleanor. Thank you very much, Richard. Uh, good morning or good afternoon, uh, everybody. I'm glad to be here today to present, to give an overview of the XPlex Hydro Project. Uh, our project has been funded by the European Union in the framework of Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program. By 2030, the European Union is targeting at least 32% of energy coming from renewables, as as we have already seen from the previous presentation, a large amount of the share will come from variable wind and solar sources, and so obviously the power system will require an increase in flexibility. Hydropower already provides critical services, critical power services to the grid. But it has to be ready to comply with the new requirements of the future power system. Indeed, it is in this context that our project is willing to have hydropower ready for this energy transition. And especially in supporting the grid requirement in terms of availability and flexibility. Indeed, as we already said in the previous presentation, digitalization and advanced control of the machine and the global hydraulic system will play a crucial role to comply with those objectives. Here you have our project Xlex Hydro in a nutshell. So as I said before, the project is a research and innovation program, but the level of readiness has to be at a demonstration level. This means that our innovation action has to be demonstrated on a real power plant site. Indeed, to comply with this, we selected 7 demonstration sites, 7 power plants in order to cover the whole European hydropower fleet. In this for this goal, we selected 7 hydropower plants by covering all types of power plants, so reservoir storage power plants, pump storage power plant, and runoff river. We try to cover as much as possible the capacity available of those power plants, so we go from 5 megawatts up to 2 gigawatts. And furthermore, we try to cover all kinds of raulic machines. In terms of consortium, the product features 19 partners. Of course, we have all the power plant owners, so in Switzerland, Portugal, and France. Uh, we also have in the consortium of the manufacturer of hydraulic machines and systems, uh, several research institute institutions, uh, small and medium enterprise, and, uh, uh, several universities. And EPFL is in Switzerland is the coordinator of this project. The budget and resources that have been granted by the European Union are €15 million and the overall cost of the project is about €18 million. So it's an important project but of course will require a very important effort for coordination and project management. That's why we have a couple of work packages of the 13 that we have in the project that are dedicated to the project management. The other work packages are the 2nd and the 3 dedicated to the innovation actions. I will spend my last few slides talking about more detail of those innovation actions activities. The work packages 4 to 9 are about the demonstrations on the PowerPoint sites and 10 to 12 about deployment of the activities and uh the dissemination cross-cut. So, about the innovation action. Uh, the first one is the flexibility matrix. The flexibility matrix for our product has a really key role in providing mapping of hydropower technology in supporting several flexibility services. So we have been working so far in defining what those flexibility services are and how we can stretch the technology's potential to comply as much as possible to the provision of those flexibility services. Uh, already, we have to split this flexibility metrics in 21, the ancillary services matrix, and the second one, the flexibility KPI matrix. What I will present to you today is the ancillary services matrix at this first stage, and this is the first milestone of our project. So as you can see here, I'll give you a few more details to understand how to read this. So on the left column, you have the list of the demonstration sites. On the right column, you have uh all technological solutions we are considering and we are stretching to comply with this flexibility support. So we have a fixed speed, variable speed, uh, hydraulic short circuit, and hybridization with batteries. And the SDPS is not cover plan supervisor and I will talk later about this. At the top row, you have the ancillary services and uh at the bottom row, the corresponding market framework. So far we fill in only the baseline case, so this means how today the demonstration looks like with the corresponding technology it is implemented. Of course, all along the project we will fill in these metrics with all empty spaces. Uh, by assessing also the other technology that we are going to demonstrate on site. And today, it's, it is also a qualitative analysis. So you can see here you have the capability or not capability of the of the specified technology at a certain power plant to provide the service. So red in case it's not capable, dark, dark green in case it's capable, and light green in case it's capable, but it can be improved. And uh the second stage of this metrics is gonna be to have a quantitative analysis. It means those color dots are gonna be substituted by numbers representing the capacity in terms of power or energy to comply with the circus service, and we are going to do the same thing also for the other matrix about the flexibility KPIs. The second, uh, innovation activities is the Smart Power Plant Supervisor, the SDPS, and this is for to assess the integration of each technological solutions, so the one that I listed before in the flexibility matrix, and the goal is to increase the power plant potential in terms of output value, availability, and flexibility. how we are going to do so. So this is going to be by means of digital digitalization measures and advanced control algorithms. The idea is to find the optimal operation of the power plant in order to comply with an extended and flexible operating range, but also with a faster response to the grid needs. The DSO, it is if today we have the operation of hydraulic system at one single optimum point based basically on the efficiency of the overall system. Tomorrow, we are gonna have a multi-dimensional insert where we have multiple points of operation depending on the grid needs. So considering not only the efficiency but also the maintenance of, the global availability, warranty, etc. as we also saw that are important factors in the other presentations. So to conclude, uh, the project, as I said before, it's 4 year long, started in September 2019, so ending in 2023. made by 23 main phases innovation, where we are now, demonstration and deployment. In the deployment phase, we will take a drawing of a roadmap and white paper, the analysis of the market uptake, and the dissemination process. So with this, I thank you very much for your attention. If you have any curiosity or if you are willing to know more about the project, please go on the website Ilexhao.net and I will be here for a Q&A questions for session to, to take all your questions and thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much, uh, Eleanor. Um, I'm sure that will have stimulated, uh, uh, some, some thinking and also, um, some thoughts about how aligned this work, um, is and, and could be further aligned, uh, with the presentations mentioned previously. Um, if we now move to our last presentation, which is, uh, uh, Sebastian Ster who, uh, is, is going to bring forward A summary of the work that's been carried out again with a link to Horizon 2020 on climate information for integrated renewable electricity generation in West Africa. Uh, Sebastian works as a researcher and consultant at the Faculty of Engineering Science at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. So, uh, over to you, Sebastian. Our latest research on hydropower, solar power, and wind power planning in West Africa. This research is performed under the CIREC project, which stands for Climate Information for integrated renewable Electricity Generation, and which is carried out by a consortium of European and West African scientific institutions and funded under Horizon 2020. The study has appeared a couple of weeks ago in Nature Sustainability and is entitled Smart Renewable Electricity Portfolios in West Africa. Now, what's the context of this study? West Africa is a region grappling with challenges in electricity access. Many people in West Africa don't have any access to electricity at all, whether on grid or off grid, and 4 West African countries are in the worldwide bottom 10 in terms of electricity access. Now, what are countries doing about that? Historically, West African countries have relied a lot on gas and hydropower, so there are many plans on the table for expanding natural gas power and hydropower production. But at the same time, solar and wind power have been making cautious inroads in recent years. So several countries have commissioned their first utility scale solar PV parks and Senegal has recently become the first West African country to commission a large scale utility scale wind power park. So what does that mean? That means that West African countries have the opportunity to grow renewables while growing their grids, so they have the opportunity from the outset to design their grids to accommodate large amounts of variable renewables, but this has to be done in a smart way. So these future grids in West Africa are going to have to be very flexible. Now there are obviously many different ways in which you can provide flexibility, generation-driven, storage-driven, demand driven. In this research, we focused. On the generation driven side and in particular, the question was, how could West African countries leverage the potential of flexibility from hydropower plants, the potential for cross-border trade and the potential of solar wind synergies to best increase the share of renewables in their power mixes so as to limit the increase in natural gas demand while helping to meet the ever rising demand for electricity. Now, if you want to look at those kinds of, those kinds of strategies, integrated hydro, solar wind strategies, you're going to have to couple many different timescales and sectors. So you're going to have to look at electricity generation from hourly to yearly to decadal timescales and you're going to have to look at water resources such as in terms of environmental flows or safeguarding reservoir lake levels across all of these time scales as well. So we developed a new model which is available open source freely available for everyone on GitHub called Reva Renewable Electricity Variability Upscaling and Balancing, whose purpose is to identify intelligent mixes of hydro, solar, and wind power and optimal hydropower management curves in order to best assist with the integration of variable renewables without endangering environmental needs for water. So I'm going to show you an example here of how the model works for one single hydropower plant in Ghana, the Bui hydropower plant. So the model crosses all the scales from hourly up to decadal coupling energy and water. So on an hourly time scale, that means it calculates the optimal dispatch of a hydropower plant in order to best accommodate solar and wind in a load following electricity mix. And then all the way across the seasonal, interannual, and decadal time scales, it assures that the resulting reservoir water levels, while always complying with environmental flow requirements, remain within certain safe boundaries while allowing the plant to provide the needed flexibility. So this is an exercise that can be repeated for any hydropower plant in any set of solar and wind power plants. So we basically collected a database of all the existing planned and potential hydropower projects across all of West Africa, as well as the existing and planned locations for solar and wind power exploitation across the region, which obviously depends very much on the local climatological and meteorological circumstances in each country. And we ran the model for different combinations of these power plants. So for example, one of the most important things we did was to compare how countries would fare if they all tried this kind of strategy nationally, so on their own national grid using their own hydropower resources to compensate. for variabilities of their own solar and wind power resources to another one in which we assumed there was a West African power pool with adequate transmission infrastructure interconnecting all the countries, adequate cross-border transmission infrastructure that would allow the countries to share their potential with one another. And very interestingly, we find that this latter situation works much better than the former one, so allowing countries to share their resources has huge benefits for the penetration of renewables on a joint West African grid, and we can easily show in a Sankey diagram which countries based on their own nationally available resources would contribute which resources most. Strongly, and so it's mostly the countries in the south of the region with high elevation differences such as Nigeria and Guinea that would contribute most of the hydropower. All West African countries have pretty good solar resources, but it's the countries in the north where the potential is highest, and the wind power potential is concentrated in a few select locations, mostly in Senegal, Mali, and ***. Now why does a West African power pool work so well? This is because it allows to exploit several synergies between renewables. There's a seasonal synergy between hydropower in the wet season and solar and wind power during the dry season. Secondly, there are diurnal synergies between solar and wind, with solar power obviously only available during daytime, wind power being strongest during nighttime. And thirdly, there is the spatial synergy between north and south, which can be leveraged by a West African power pool, with hydropower being mostly concentrated in the south of the region and the highest solar and wind power potential in the north. So a West African power pool allows To comprehensively harness all of these synergies simultaneously, whereas if each country were to go for it individually, then this wouldn't work as well because no single West African country has high enough potential of all these resources in order to efficiently exploit. These synergies. So, we basically find hydropower can be a very important asset to support solar and wind power in West Africa. This gives a great opportunity to diversify West African power generation with renewables while growing grids, unique opportunity to avoid fossil fuel combustion. West African power pool would be a very important lever to help countries make optimal use of synergetic hydro solar wind resources, and using existing and planned hydro to massively support solar and wind power, as we argue in our paper, can also avoid the need for further excessive damming and negative ecological consequences in the future. The findings of our study are not only relevant for West Africa, but also other African power pools which usually comprise countries that span a large array of different climatic zone. So we can think for example of the contribution that Cameroon could make with its flexible hydropower to the Central African power pool or the contributions of, for example, Ethiopia or Uganda in the Eastern Africa power pool and beyond the African continent, there's a worldwide relevance to these findings. So we probably all know the example of Norway using its hydropower to facilitate exchanges with other European countries, for example, with Denmark, which has a lot of intermittent wind power generation. And there are many other regions in the world either rich in hydropower or in hydropower potential in which these kinds of integrated hydro solar wind strategies could be very interesting because hydropower can provide both baseload power as well as flexible power in order to help meet peak loads and help make space for solar and wind power generation. So aside. From North Europe, we can also think of various countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, many of which are hydrodependent but seeking to diversify or different countries in Central Asia and Southeast Asia. So we are currently also working on some of these regions, trying to extend the reach of our modeling and to other regions of the world. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, uh, for that, uh, that, that presentation, uh, Sebastian. Again, I, I, I think that this, um, shows the, uh, the richness of, uh, thinking that is going on, uh, in, in and around hydropower innovation and how hydropower needs to be, um, designed to deliver flexibility, whether it's, uh, in the developing world context with new systems being Uh, implemented and also with the case of modernizing the existing fleet around the world, uh, where, uh, new investments can increase the amount of flexibility provision from those hydropower assets. Um, we're now moving into our Q&A session, and we've got some, some questions in hand. I think I'll take one round for the first question for each of the presenters. So I'll turn to Paolo, uh, first, and, um, uh, we have a question here about flexibility and its and its definition and perhaps needing to spend. Some effort into ensuring that there's a common understanding of what flexibility means for the energy transition, particularly in the electricity systems that are increasingly providing services for other sectors such as transport. So, uh, Paulo, perhaps you could say a little bit of a word in response to the need for greater building a common understanding around this uh this term flexibility. I'll try my best. I would say the single most important variable in this discussion is time. Uh, you will need the different, uh, power system flexibility products or resources depending on the issue of time, which goes and, and the TCP proposes that the IAEA in large proposes a classification of six different time scales. The From subseconds to seconds, which is the system stability issue. To the months and years for the seasonal and interannual availability of variable renewables and everything which is in between. So for instance, longer, longer periods of variable renewable surplus of deficit. Now, so it is true that of course in my presentation, I, I, I gave the, how can I say, a disaggregation level 0 on the flexibility. Uh, what is very Can you, uh, WebEx is preventing Power video from showing? OK, as, as, as long as you can hear me correctly, this is OK. So the important point is the time scale, and the important thing is Hydro can, um, provide a contribution in almost all of these parts, maybe, maybe not. In the subseconds area, but the other point is the market and the power system do not, are not necessarily well organized, and this is why this flexibility matrix that Elena has shown is so important, because it looks at the different dimension of the issue which is not just technological. Anyway, um. Time, the time scale is the real difference in these flexibility options. Then of course there are a number of hydropower is not the only one. It's not only the solution that can provide flexibility, grid and interconnections, uh, other forms of storage, uh, demand side response is equally important. Yeah, noted. And I think also, uh, cited by some of the other presenters, uh, quite rightly. OK, so I'd, uh, I'd like to move to Dolph. Uh, we have a question on, um, the cost work that IRA has been doing and, um, how, how can IRA improve the comparative analysis, uh, in relation to the level of service from different sources of generation. Over to your dog. Uh, that is clearly a core issue that came back in, in a number of interventions now in this, this panel. Uh, we, uh, have, uh, we have looked at that in, in some detail. Um, in March we issued a report which is called Electricity Storage Evaluation Framework, maybe you can't see it, uh, anyway, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's about this issue about how do you. And how do you value different services from, uh, from electricity storage, including pump storage, and, and, and what does that do to the economics of projects? So, so that, that, uh, uh, has received quite some, some attention and it's not only a report, there's also a tool to apply it. Uh, on the more general, um, role of, of, uh, let's say dispatchable, uh, renewables and then the ability to, to store water. Uh, we have another tool called Flex tool. It's an, an, um, it's a, and to put it simple, it's, it's a simplified version of Power Factory, uh, so a, a tool to, to, uh, assess the, um, the, the, the, uh, system, uh, services and their, uh, uh, evaluation and, and how you can design the system in such a way that, that it, it operates, uh, best. Um, we have applied that now to a number of countries and in that context, uh, we've also looked at, at, uh, um, what role hydro can play in that and what, what level of hydro investments would be needed. So, but you, you have to do that system by system. So it's not like you have a single value and that's the surface value of hydros. It's very, very case specific as, as power laws. Thank you, uh, Doug. So, um, I'm sure we can come back to that, um, and, uh, I, I would like now to move to, uh, Doctor Huang. Um, how, how, how, uh, should we be monitoring and reporting on the costs and benefits of interconnections? Uh, we've heard, uh, just now from both, uh, Paulo and, and Dolph that, um, Interconnections is another dimension of bringing flexibility and resilience into power systems, but how can we actually quantify and monitor the impact and report around these benefits that interconnections will will bring. Um, thank you, Richard. Um, actually, it says, uh, A very difficult question. Uh, I do believe, um, I, I want to, um, answer this question with uh two parts. Uh, the first part is The benefits and also the performance. Or for the renewable system is relaying on interconnection. So I, I would like to say, you know, um, there is no way individually say the power grid, it, this is the, um, this is because the good performance of power grid only because grid is a connection. It's a tool to make the renewable, um, you know, different kinds of renewable, uh, could be, you know, realized their complementary features and also coordinate with the load dynamic response. On the other hand, the power grid is the path, uh, you know, combine the DC and AC, different type of technology. So the, the grid give a path for renewable flow into customers um instruments. So, my first point is, uh, from a technical perspective, in my understanding, there is, uh, uh, no very single, um, features or characteristics or, uh, factors or index can evaluate or testify the power grid performance. So the second thing is, you know, so the question is how you can say it's a good grade or a bad grade. Uh, so the grid function is make the whole system very strong, very flexible, so that means it plays the rule like the highway and also the small road to the home. So it must be reliable and also with the high performance to reduce the power quality at the low side. Um, you know, in one word, um, I hope I answered this question. I, I think the power grid is the critical path and the central rule in a power system and also a renewable energy system. So it has special rule. It makes the renewable, um, Be in used and also make it possible for the customer to receive the clean power. Thank you, Richard. More, um, detailed modeling tools that will allow for planning. Um, so, uh, Alejandro, can you, can you say a little bit more about, um, what you would like to see by way of improved, uh, quality of modeling, uh, as, as we plan the, the future systems? Sure, um, and you, I am not a modeler. I'll preface my comments with that, so you'll get very, very quickly beyond my, my level of expertise, but I think it's pretty. Insightful that last year when the Electric Power Research Institute in in the US, which is a big sort of, it's the big research arm of the electric utilities, published a report looking at at the degree to which pump storage, and, and then they expanded it to all storage was incorporated in in um utilities planning going forward. And in addition to almost no pump storage being being incorporated, um, relatively little even battery. Storage was and, and, you know, maybe a third of the utilities that they looked at were including it. And the message was very clear, was that utilities said overwhelmingly, even those that included storage, that they didn't have the modeling capabilities to understand specifically how they were going to use different assets in the future, and that means they don't have the ability to determine the appropriate sizing, the location, and the technology. That will be optimal, which means you can say storage or pumped storage or hydro flexibility is valuable in concept, but it makes it very difficult to turn it into an actual project, which is what utilities need for planning, what ministries who do energy planning need. And so it's those capabilities, particularly as flexibility becomes more than just a small role on the system, but something that becomes. Enough of a value that it needs to be compensated for and planned for that that needs to be reflected, particularly in the capacity expansion models which right now just take time slices and don't really tend to show the transfer between one time slice and the other time slice and that's really what flexibility, you know, in in a very high level is. It's the transfer between one state of of operation and another, so. OK. You need to unmute Richard. Thank you and I apologize. Uh, moving to Elena, I would like to, um, Ask you, uh, well, there's a question, there's several questions here, I think one that kind of wraps up several of them about the reporting, um, uh, Richard, guidance that's going to come out of this X Flex project. Uh, could you say a little bit about what will be the, uh, deliverables in terms of guiding the hydropower sector. Uh, yes, thanks for the question. So, uh, there is one indicative package, uh, which is willing to deliver a roadmap for the future of hydropower, especially in terms of, uh, upgrading or modification of hydropower machine. And also a more detailed white paper willing really to guide how the hydropower solution should be in order to get the maximum operation and flexibility support to the power system. Of course, this will be really related depending on the technology that are employed, depending on what is shown by demonstration or in the implementation of sites. So saying before what is gonna be the best solution is that it's quite hard though of course the variable speed will be one of the key player in the technology in order to maximize the Uh, the support and the flexibility that hydropower can provide, but we already that so many other technologies can help in this provision without recurring to variable speeds. So, uh, I think there, there would be a clear explanation coming out of the project at the end of the 4 years about what would be the best solution depending on the hydropower type, uh, size and technology employed. Richard, we don't hear you. Sorry, that's my own incompetence. I apologize about that. Um, there, there are questions with regards to, um, what KPIs are, um, going to, um, Uh, be captured in, in this other part of the, uh, assessment, um, about delivering, uh, ancillary services, but also other, uh, flexibility services and also another question, uh, with, um, with, with regards to, uh, the battery, um, application. Uh, uh, if you just I'll come back to you if I have the time before we close to, if you just be prepared to, uh, perhaps add some more. So, uh, moving now to Sebastian, um, I hope you, uh, yeah, you're still with us, um, with regards to the, um, the report that you have published, and first of all, congratulations on what has, um, caused quite an interest in, in the publication that you referenced earlier, uh, in Nature, which I, I think is, uh, is also cited, um, in your, uh, in your presentation. Um. One of the things that we're getting some questions about is um references to those things that have been cited during the presentations and um I can say uh hopefully uh correctly that we will be uh compiling a report that will include these uh these references and contacts. So um don't, don't worry if you missed scribbling it down, but um in, in the paper, uh you, you refer to um. Africa achieving considerable renewable energy generation, but it didn't appear to be 100% of that that was needed. Uh, is that something that, first of all, is a correct observation, or, um, and how would you comment to that that question? Yes, thank you very much, Richard. That's indeed a very important question. Um, so in particular our study looked at the amount of power demand that could be met with a combination of flexible hydro plus solar plus wind. So how much firm power could you deliver with a combination of those resources using both the existing hydro assets as well as potential future hydro assets in a smart way. And indeed if, if, if you only use hydropower to compensate for the variabilities in solar and wind power, you can get quite some way, but you don't get all the way to 100%, which is mostly because electricity demand in West Africa is going through the roof and rising at enormous rates. So indeed to get to 100% in the future, further solutions are going to be needed. You can think for. Example of a massive um for deployment of solar PV along with batteries which are getting cheaper and cheaper, but given the existing uh strong base of hydropower that exists in the region and the experience that countries have with hydropower, we believe that hydropower can be a very important asset on the near term to help increase the shares of solar and wind power on the often relatively weak grids. In the West African context, uh, so, uh, increasing the share of renewables while maintaining grid stability and reducing the climate damaging impact of an increase in natural gas, which would otherwise result given the rapidly increasing demand. OK, thank, thank you for that. Um, I think there's also interest in, um, your, your, your, your future plans. Uh, is this, is this the end of the, um, Of the research or or or what uh what will you be doing next? OK, so, um, let me, let me maybe share with you, um, very quickly two interesting pieces of research that we're involved in at the moment, uh, which are basically direct follow-ups of the West African case study. Um, so for the first one we basically went straight to the other side of the continent and looking at the Eastern Africa Power Pool, which is in terms of the spatial distribution of different climatic zones and different renewable potentials for hydro, solar, and wind power is probably even more interesting than the West Africa case. And here you also have several countries such as Ethiopia at the front that aim to become regional powerhouses using their hydropower potential. And another uh case study that we're doing at the moment is actually very much the opposite of a of a power pool. Um, so here we're talking more about the context of uh of uh the kind of isolated grids you have in uh small island developing states. Um, in particular, we're uh we're looking at um at Suriname, which is a small South American country classified as a small island developing state. Um, which has a big hydropower plant which used to belong to a foreign company active in the aluminum industry, so which used the electricity to support its industrial activities. Um, so at some point industrial activity declined and the firm started selling electricity at very elevated rates to the Surinamese state. Now half a year ago they withdrew from the country and the hydropower plant was handed over to the Surinamese government. Um, so now this is the opportunity for them to use that hydropower plant, um, uh, to do very interesting things with that in terms of flexibility provision to increase the shares of variable renewables on their grid. Um, so those are two concrete case studies that we're working on at the moment. Obviously, as I mentioned, there are various other regions in the world where this would be extremely interesting. My ambition is to do this at least for all the, all the other power pools on the African continent, the Central African Power pool, Southern African Power pool. Um, and hopefully also for other regions in the world such as Central Asia, maybe the Caucasus region where this could be extremely pertinent, that will be dependent on on research funding, but at least that's our ambition. OK, thank you, thank you very much for that. Now we just have 5 minutes remaining, and I would like to give that opportunity to Each of you, if you would like to um just say uh if uh uh in the previous session uh that was eloquently moderated um by Pravin Khaki, he, he said if you were just about to tweet. Um, what you, what you thought about this session and perhaps what you learned about this session or what you think should be done next. Um, this is your opportunity to give us a minute of your, uh, thinking in that respect. And, um, again, I'll start from the top, um, and Paulo, um, uh, what would you, um, think to contribute to that request? Uh Sorry, I hope I heard the uh your question correctly, and can you just confirm that you're hearing me correctly because the line is very bad. OK, very good now. Uh, to me, um, I would say, uh, for me overall, in the end, uh, what is really needed is that the issues of the hydropower, which are related to long lead times of investments and the long term planning, become a priority for policymakers and regulators. And that we fix the framework conditions in terms of market design of regulatory framework and of uh policy uh priority that really attract investment in the hydro sector, in innovation, with new technologies and making the point that this is vital for the energy transitions as an enabler of more wind and, and PV. I would stress that. Great, Paolo, thank you. Uh, Dolph, can you match that or better it? But, uh, it's. Uh, for, for me to take away is that, uh, hydrogen is, uh, hydropower is not the, uh, mature old technology. But a key part of the new energy system, and, uh, there is a lot of innovation going on at the technology and at the systems level, and hydro will continue to play a key role. Thank you. Uh, great, uh, Ham, how can you, uh, comment? Thank you, Richard. I would like to say in, in the modern renewable energy world, with the increasing solar energy and also wind energy. The hydropower is still playing the central role and may play more important role than before to create a low carbon energy world. That means when we think about the new hydropower system, it has more stakeholders involved in, so we need a good platform to work together. Thank you. Thank you very much, Han. Uh, Eleanor, you have two, deliverables. The first is to, uh, just briefly mention the, uh, key performance indicator matrix that you mentioned, and then, uh, your takeaway from, uh, this session. You're muted. I'm sorry, I apologize. I'm glad someone else did it as well as me. So, uh, main KPIs, uh, of the project are related to, for instance, the capacity of storage power plant, the capacity, uh, uh, of course in terms of power, but also in terms of load shifting, for instance, uh, the extension of operating range, uh, the fast start and stop, uh, power ramp up, for instance, 0 to 100%, and some others, so we didn't finalize this list yet. It is in progress. But I would say those are the main component of the KPIs that we are considering. And your takeaway from this session. My takeaway perfectly in line with Adolf. I would, with, uh, I would say, um, hydropower is still is not the mature techno, the mature technology that some people think it is, and that we still have a great space for improvement and especially for conduct excellence in terms of research and innovation activities. Thank you very much. And uh lastly but not least, Sebastian, uh, just a very short, uh, message that you would convey from this, uh, this, this panel. Yes, thank you very much, Richard. So it seems that we all agree that hydropower will have an important role to play in the future electricity mixes across the world in order to help the integration of solar and wind power, and I think what what is needed now is focused case studies both on individual plant level as well as on the country or regional level in order to figure out strategies for how that could best work on the short and on the long term. Great. Thank you. Thanks very much and I, I really, um, do look forward to trying to, uh, contribute to a summary of this session, which I think has been, uh, um, really, uh, a, a, a great opportunity and also, um, I think an opportunity to to connect better ourselves, uh, the work that's going on around the world. Um, I think I should mention some housekeeping that, uh, the, uh, this event continues again tomorrow. Um, on, on, uh, in the morning at 8:30 um Washington DC time, uh, Eastern Daylight Time. Um, we will have the session that is going to focus on sustainability, climate, and, and safety, and I think some of the questions that we've received today have been held over to, to, um, to put them into, into that session to already give an indication of how interesting that will be. Uh, the following session and final session will, will start at 10:30 a.m., uh, in, in Washington DC time and will focus on investment and finance. Uh, so, um, we very much look forward to, uh, all the participants, uh, those that have been watching on YouTube to join us again tomorrow. And with that, I would just like to thank everyone who's put so much time and effort into this session too. I really appreciate the contributions and uh working with technology that is uh is is challenging sometimes. So, um, I recognize that we have got some. Uh, thank you, and, um, uh, we will, uh, conclude this session now. Thank you very much to all the presenters.

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Speakers: Paolo Frankl, Head of renewable energy, International Energy Agency; Dolf Gielen, Director IITC, International Renewable Energy Agency; Han Huang, Deputy Director-General, Economic & Technology Research, GEIDCO; Alejandro Moreno, Director Water Power Technologies Office, US Department of Energy; Elena Vagnoni, XFLEX HYDRO Project, EPFL, Switzerland; Sebastian Sterl, CIREG Project, VUB, Belgium. Moderated by Richard Taylor, Former CEO International Hydropower Association.

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