Natel Energy

Today is World Fisheries Day! Numerous tests have demonstrated 98-100% survival rates for a variety of fish—including sturgeon, catfish, eel, salmonids, and river herring—passing through turbines using Natel's FishSafe™ designs. Let us know in the comments which of these fish is your favorite. 🌟 While many people associate fisheries with oceans, freshwater ecosystems like rivers, lakes, and wetlands are equally critical to maintaining global fisheries. These freshwater environments host nearly half the world’s fish species and are the source of more than 40% of all fish consumed globally. Fisheries, and freshwater ecosystems in particular, are under pressure from human activities, however. Rethinking the way we manage fish passage in hydropower can help reduce this pressure. At Natel, we believe it’s possible to restore fisheries while also expanding and advancing renewable energy. Our FishSafe™ turbine designs: 🐟 Enable exceptional survival rates for downstream fish passage; 💧 Improve river connectivity by allowing fish to pass directly through turbines; ⚡ Generate renewable energy while preserving aquatic ecosystems. By choosing FishSafe™ turbines for equipment upgrades at existing plants, new plant construction, and retrofits of non-powered dams, the hydropower industry can support and restore fisheries, while still working to provide more reliable and renewable energy. Happy World Fisheries Day! And don't forget to vote for your favorite fish 😊 #WorldFisheriesDay #fisheries #fish #hydropower #sustainability #withhydropower #waterpower #fishsafe #fishpassage #renewableenergy

CTO Abe Schneider, Principal Engineer Sterling Watson, and Sr Sales Manager Harry Driscoll are heading to Graz next week! Visit us in stand 20, and don't miss Abe and Sterling's presentation at 9:00 on Wednesday. The Aqua~Media International Ltd (The International Journal on Hydropower & Dams) Hydro 2024 International Conference and Exhibition kicks off next Monday in Austria, and we're looking forward to exhibiting and connecting with our colleagues overseas. Graz holds a special place in our hearts too, as the adjacent Energie Steiermark AG Sauerbrunn site is the first European hydropower plant to be powered by Natel-designed FishSafe™ turbines! 🐟 🇦🇹 On Wednesday at 9 in the morning, Abe and Sterling will speak about Natel's FishSafe™ turbine design process and will share how innovations in the design of Kaplan-style runners, specifically, can improve fish survival rates dramatically. They'll also discuss how FishSafe™ runners and turbines integrate into existing hydropower infrastructure and how Natel leverages computational modeling and other data-driven strategies to balance ecological and operational goals. 🎤 Hydraulic design of an efficient 8.5 MW RHT-Kaplan runner upgrade for high eel and alosine passage survival 📅 Wed, Nov 20 🕘 9:00 📍 Session 23, Messe Congress Graz See you soon! #Hydro2024 #Graz #Europe #hydropower #withhydropower #engineering #turbines #ecohydraulics #fishsafe

Happy Halloween! 🎃🐟 We celebrated in our all-hands meeting with a virtual parade of costumes, and there are a lot of great ones this year! From left to right are Assoc Mech Engineer Brit W. as an '80s (turbine) runner, Sr Mech Engineer Owen Hale as Shrek (and Rosie the dog as his trusted steed), VP External Affairs Kate Stirr as Rosie the Riveter, Test Engineer Robert Stone III as The Fonz, Sr Marketing Mgr Betsy Pfeiffer as Woodsy Owl, COO & VP Engineering Gregor Cadman as a super burrito, Sr Program Mgr Ryan Scribner as our new fish X-ray machine, Principal Engineer Sterling Watson as an 80's workout, and Research Engineer Simone Lassar as a Thomas Dambo troll. Joining virtually are Sr Mgr Turbine Partners Will Shields as a Viking, Sr Business Dev Mgr Jessica Penrod as a cat, Sr Sales Mgr Harry Driscoll as a Día de los Muertos skeleton, R&D Operations Mgr Alex Wickersham as Anakin aka Darth Vader, Policy Mgr Miles Hall as a piece of pizza (again!), and CTO Abe Schneider as a Minion. Votes are still coming in, but it's currently a very close race between Harry and Simone (last year's winner). Let us know in the comments if you have a favorite costume! And have a wonderful evening. 😊👻 #Halloween #costume #Natel #fishsafe #hydropower #cleantech

Our latest newsletter is out! We've been busy at Natel, and we’re excited to share a few recent highlights: 🐟 The white sturgeon passage tests we conducted with researchers from University of California, Davis showed >99% survival rates, even at 27.6 m/s, aka 62 mph! Read the newsletter and check back here for more details about those tests, as we continue to analyze the data. 🌟 Sterling Watson was selected for the National Hydropower Association's first Future Leaders of Waterpower Rising Star award. 🏆 Natel won Best in EnergyTech at this year's Global Tech Awards. 💧 Representatives from Natel and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) led an NHA workshop on optimizing hydropower operations to protect eel as well as achieve efficient power production. You can now read a summary of insights and watch a recording of the presentations online. 🌎 Natel is leading a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-funded project to educate the public about hydropower's role in renewable energy and freshwater ecology in Minnesota. 🇦🇹 See you next at Aqua~Media International Ltd (The International Journal on Hydropower & Dams)'s Hydro 2024 in Graz, November 18-20! The newsletter is here: https://lnkd.in/gvHA4Fvq As always, you can sign up if you're not already a subscriber, and please reach out to us if you have any questions or would like to discuss a feasibility study for your site: https://lnkd.in/g6dxVtTf #Natel #fishsafe #newsletter #withhydropower #hydropower #waterpower #fishpassage #renewableenergy

An article by Natel co-founder and CCO Gia Schneider was featured in the MCJ Newsletter! In this piece, Gia discusses hydropower's critical role in the net zero transition and explains why modernizing this renewable resource is key to protecting both our energy future and aquatic ecosystems. https://lnkd.in/gJjns8Sf Some key take-aways: ☀ Hydropower plays a crucial role in stabilizing a renewable grid by balancing intermittent power sources like wind and solar. Hydropower currently provides 40% of the renewable electricity in the US and is the largest renewable energy source globally, a position expected to hold through at least 2028. 🐟 Conventional hydropower turbines can negatively impact fish populations, just one example of why we need to update our equipment to better protect ecosystems as we grow renewable capacity. 💵 Traditional fish protection methods, like fish screens, bypasses, and nightly shutdowns are expensive and reduce plant efficiency, making them less viable for widespread hydropower use. 💡 Natel's FishSafe turbine designs offer innovative solutions that support fish passage without compromising energy efficiency or requiring costly modifications. ⏳ The time is now. As aging hydropower plants face relicensing, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve both energy production and environmental performance through turbine modernization, ensuring long-term sustainability. Read the full article in My Climate Journey to learn more about how innovation in hydropower can benefit both the grid and our ecosystems! Shoutout to Fishheart Ltd. in section three. https://lnkd.in/gJjns8Sf #hydropower #renewableenergy #netzero #renewables #greenenergy #sustainability #fishsafe #Natel #MyClimateJourney #modernization #innovation #withhydropower #waterpower

We are thrilled to announce that Natel's FishSafe turbine designs have won the Best in Energy Tech award from the Global Tech Awards! 🏆 The Global Tech Awards recognize the most innovative, creative, and impactful technology solutions across industries worldwide. Our award-winning FishSafe turbine designs stood out for several reasons: 🐟 They're safe for fish—Through rigorous testing and refinement, Natel has achieved through-turbine fish passage survival rates of 98-100% across multiple fish species and life stages. FishSafe turbines have demonstrated safe fish passage even while operating at conventional blade speeds and maintaining high hydraulic efficiency. 🏦 They're cost-effective—safe through-turbine fish passage eliminates the need for fine screens or nightly shutdowns, lowering the total cost of ownership and accelerating return on investment by 2-10x. 🏗 They're broadly applicable—FishSafe designs are suitable for direct replacement of propeller, Kaplan, and Francis-style runners and turbines in a variety of configurations and at a variety of operating speeds for plants under 40 m (130 ft) head. In-place replacements of aging equipment with FishSafe turbines or runners can reestablish plant lifetime while meeting competitive efficiency requirements and improving environmental baselines. Thank you to the Global Tech Awards for honoring our commitment to advancing sustainable hydropower through FishSafe turbine engineering! By adopting FishSafe turbine technology, the hydropower industry can promote and safeguard freshwater biodiversity as we all work to decarbonize the grid and achieve net zero. https://lnkd.in/gyYnfd-6 #withhydropower #innovation #renewableenergy #cleantech #power #netzero #hydropower #technology #award #engineering #fishsafe

The September issue of International Water Power & Dam Construction features an interview with Natel co-founder and CCO Gia Schneider! If you were at Clean Currents last week, you might have picked up a copy in person, otherwise you can read the magazine online here—we're on page 30 🐟💧 https://lnkd.in/esKGG-sD In this interview, Gia discusses her education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her experience working in energy finance, and her childhood growing up with Abe Schneider and learning about river ecosystems first-hand. Drawing on this background, Gia, Abe, and their father, Dan, founded Natel with the goal of making hydropower more sustainable by rethinking turbine engineering. Natel's FishSafe turbine designs are each adapted to the specific site where they will operate, but they all share distinctive blade shape characteristics of a thick and forward-swept leading edge. These design hallmarks allow the runners to rotate a high speeds, maintaining conventional turbine performance metrics while also passing fish safely downstream, directly through the turbines. Two challenges that the hydropower industry faces at this moment in time are the need to upgrade aging infrastructure and the need to meet increasing environmental requirements. FishSafe turbines meet both of these needs while eliminating the need for other costly fish passage requirements like shutdowns or screens. In this article, Gia details how FishSafe turbines can increase power generation and decrease CapEx and OpEx, accelerating return on investment for plant owners. She also discusses life lessons learned and what it means to be appointed to the International Hydropower Association (IHA)'s Board of Directors. https://lnkd.in/gNphcXGj #hydropower #withhydropower #waterpower #fishsafe #modernization #innovation #turbine #upgrade #sustainability

Our Natel contingent—Bill Malus, Gia Schneider, Abe Schneider, Kate Stirr, Pat Donahue, Sterling Watson, Jessica Penrod, Will Shields, Betsy Pfeiffer, Miles Hall—had a wonderful time at Clean Currents this year! Two big highlights were Gia's conversation with Malcolm Woolf about embracing innovation in hydropower and Sterling's selection as a Rising Star by the Future Leaders of Waterpower, both part of the opening plenary. Also on Wednesday, Abe spoke to a packed room about modernizing existing hydropower sites with turbines designed for fish safety, as part of a panel on Rehabilitation and Modernization moderated by Cameron M. of Xcel Energy. The next day, Sterling had the opportunity to present about using hydroelectric turbines as downstream fish passageways as part of a rockstar panel of women discussing Tools for Optimizing Environmental Outcomes. The panel was moderated by Kelly Catlett of American Rivers and also included presentations by Ann Willis of American Rivers, Brenda M. Pracheil of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Katie Kennedy of The Nature Conservancy. On Thursday, Gia joined the International Hydropower Association (IHA)'s Debbie Gray to present about the IHA's World Hydropower Outlook, specifically the North and Central American sector. Outside of the presentation rooms, we enjoyed participating in the Natel-led FishSafe runners 5k and in the morning yoga organized by the National Hydropower Association, not to mention all of the happy hours... 😉 Thank you so much to Malcolm Woolf, Marla Barnes, Joseph LoSasso, Francesca Blanco Hadjimichael, CMP, Ellie Rubalow, and everyone else at NHA who helped to make Clean Currents such a valuable and enjoyable experience! And thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth to discuss FishSafe turbines, embracing innovation, and making hydropower more sustainable for future generations! Please reach out to continue the conversation at any time: info@natelenergy.com. #CleanCurrents #hydropower #withhydropower #waterpower #fishsafe #fishpassage #sustainability #renewables #greenpower #portland

Yesterday, we honored Indigenous Peoples' Day — an opportunity to acknowledge the impact that hydropower has historically had on river ecosystems and fish populations, which are so deeply connected to many Indigenous ways of life. A number of us from Natel attended the National Hydropower Association’s Clean Currents conference in Portland last week, where we had the privilege of listening to an extraordinary panel of Indigenous women. These leaders courageously stepped into a space that has not always been the most welcoming to Indigenous perspectives to share their voices and stories. Special thanks to Kelly Catlett at American Rivers and Stephanie (Schmidt) Quinn-Davidson of Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group for organizing and inviting us to hear these women’s invaluable insights on the confluence of hydropower, land, water, and wildlife. We extend our deepest gratitude to the incredible panelists who shared their wisdom: Kayeloni Scott – Executive Director at Columbia Snake Campaign Donella Miller – Fishery Science Department Manager at Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission Molli Myers – Vice-Principal, Operations at Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group Indigenous voices are essential as we work to reconcile hydropower with ecological and cultural priorities. We are committed to learning from Indigenous leaders and taking action to ensure that hydropower evolves to become safer for fish, rivers, and the communities that depend on them. 📷 Yuba River, California — historical homelands of the Nisenan people.

It's Global Hydropower Day! Today we're celebrating the necessary role that hydropower plays in delivering clean, renewable energy. At Natel, we believe hydropower can lead the energy transition while preserving freshwater ecosystems. We’ve developed FishSafe turbines that enable 98-100% fish survival, without sacrificing hydraulic performance. To expand hydropower as a renewable resource, we believe that it’s critical to modernize aging plants and develop new sites sustainably. FishSafe turbines offer a once-in-a-generation opportunity to protect aquatic biodiversity while upgrading existing hydropower plants. FishSafe turbines also eliminate the need for additional, and expensive, fish passage infrastructure, which can reduce maintenance and deliver up to 10 times the return on investment for plant owners. FishSafe turbines have already demonstrated—at plants in the US and Europe and in published peer-reviewed studies—that they can help fish like trout, eel, river herring, and sturgeon pass safely downstream. As the industry embraces sustainability, FishSafe turbines provide a solution that ensures hydropower can lead the renewable energy transition while protecting biodiversity. This Global Hydropower Day, Natel celebrates innovation that enables a vibrant, clean energy future where all species can thrive. Thanks to Facilities Manager Benjamin Ward, Sr Program Manager Ryan Scribner, Sr Mechanical Engineer Owen Hale, Staff Engineer Ian Gagnon, PE, Research Engineer Simone Lassar, VP of External Affairs Kate Stirr, and Sr Marketing Manager Betsy Pfeiffer on the Natel team for lending their voices and faces to this video. Happy Global Hydropower Day! 🐟💧⚡ #GlobalHydropowerDay #withhydropower #hydropower #renewables #renewableenergy #waterpower #fishsafe #Natel