Relying on solar energy alone to power water monitoring stations limits the ability to monitor water resources in low-light locations, such as for streams with dense tree canopy cover. To address this limitation, water monitoring stations could have a supplementary micro hydro-turbine to harvest kinetic energy from streamflow. To explore this possibility, we simulated the energy harvesting potential at 42 locations with long term stream velocity records and determined the canopy cover for streams across the contiguous United States. Results show that a site with typical streamflow velocity and dense evergreen tree canopy would have 1.6 times less sample loss, from 68.0% to 43.0%, after adding a hydro energy harvester. Many streams across the contiguous US with dense canopy cover could benefit from this, especially headwater streams and streams in the Southeastern US where many watersheds have more than 50% of their stream length under dense tree canopy cover.

仅靠太阳能为水监测站供电会限制在光线较暗的位置（例如，树冠覆盖浓密的溪流）监测水资源的能力。为了解决这个限制，水监控站可以有一个补充的微型水轮机，以从水流中收集动能。为了探索这种可能性，我们通过长期流速度记录模拟了42个地点的能量收集潜力，并确定了整个美国河流的冠层覆盖度。结果表明，在添加水能采集器之后，具有典型流速和密集常绿乔木的地点的样本损失将减少1.6倍，从68.0％降至43.0％。遍布美国的许多溪流都可以从中受益，