The Facts Behind Hydropower

Published 4 August 2022

Hydropower accounts for nearly 7% of all electricity generated in the United States and provides quick-start capabilities during blackouts and the ability to store power for high-demand periods. ORNL’s HydroSource provides updated information on hydropower facilities and infrastructure, models and visualizations for future development, and analytical tools to better understand how and where hydropower can be implemented throughout the U.S.

to address the most pressing US hydropower-related issues. The program was expanded into HydroSource in 2017.

The HydroSource platform is an ongoing effort by the US Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Water Power Technologies Office and ORNL toward improving the quality, functionality, dissemination, and sharing of detailed and scientific hydropower data.

Results 
HydroSource was developed using the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) principles (Wilkinson et al. 2016)It enables data producers to publicly disseminate versions of their data and metadata in standardized formats with digital object identifiers and allows data users to search for and access the archived data and metadata.

The digital platform hosts multi-disciplinary science-based data with well-described attributes and metadata that meet domain-relevant community standards and aid in data discovery and reuse. It also provides centralized access to integrated and derived products to provide a singular source for flexible and user-friendly data that can be applied to address scenario-specific objectives.

Data include the following:

·  Existing Hydropower Assets (EHA) database—consists of comprehensive details on the locations and key characteristics of currently operational US hydropower plants

·  Hydropower Infrastructure - LAkes, Reservoirs, and RIvers (HILARRI)—database of links among major data sets of operational hydropower dams and power plants, and inland water bodies

·  US Non-Powered Dam Characteristics Inventory—contains identifiers, locations, and a wide variety of characteristics that describe US non-powered dams and their surroundings, including attributes related to the physical nature or design of a dam, environmental conditions, safety conditions, socioeconomic aspects, and hydropower development potential

·  New stream-reach development data set—identifies untapped US stream-reaches with high (greater than 1MW) and low (less than 1MW) energy potential with more than 100 reaches with at least 100 MW of potential capacity

·  Hydropower licensing timeline and cost database—consists of timeline dates, lengths, project characteristics, license characteristics, and costs of hydropower licensing and relicensing for 107 randomly selected hydropower projects.

The Existing Hydropower Assets database, resource assessments, and data from external sources can be used to analyze the past, present, and projected future of the hydropower industry and pumped storage development trends for the nation as reported in the Hydropower Market Report (Uría-Martínez et al., 2021).

Visualization tools include the following:

·  National Hydropower Map

·  Hydropower Development Pipeline

·  Hydropower Relicensing and Fish Species of Concern (thematic maps)

HydroSource also provides a suite of online tools and applications to increase awareness and development of hydropower capabilities across the United States.

Impact

Since its inception, HydroSource has served as a comprehensive data repository to inform hydropower infrastructure and policy decisions. HydroSource data have been used to inform policy decisions, identify future development opportunities, enable robust hydropower research, develop new tools for data-driven environmental assessment, and support strategic environmental permitting and mitigation. The content of HydroSource will continue to grow to support the sustainable development of national hydropower, which is a critical contributor to our clean, renewable future energy portfolio.