The Facts Behind Hydropower
the potential benefits of the nation’s hydropower resources, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed and maintain a comprehensive water energy digital platform called HydroSource that informs key stakeholders of development and operational costs, environmental concerns and licensing requirements.
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.
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.
“We created this digital platform to enable stakeholders, including hydropower developers and operators, non-governmental agencies and advocacy groups, and policy makers to make data-driven decisions,” said ORNL’s Debjani Singh. “We all want the same thing – to develop reliable, sustainable energy while protecting the environment.”
Overview/Objective
HydroSource is a comprehensive national water energy digital platform created by the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). It serves as a key steward in maintaining and disseminating authoritative hydropower data to key stakeholders across the United States. The resource consists of hydropower-related data sets, data models, visualizations, and analytics tools that support and enable hydropower research and development on topics of national interest. These topics include US hydropower market acceleration, deployment, resources characterization, environmental impact reduction, technology-to-market activities, and climate change impact assessment.
To aid in informing policy decisions, HydroSource is used by hydropower operators and developers; government agencies; decision makers across federal, state and local jurisdictions; nongovernmental organizations; academia; policy leaders; and the public. The digital platform increases transparency in hydropower projects and information, supports science-based analysis, enables robust research, fosters new project development, provides novel tools for data-driven environmental assessment, and informs strategic environmental permitting and mitigation.
Understanding the country’s existing hydropower fleet and potential hydropower resources is critical in supporting the broad US hydropower industry. The US hydropower fleet includes a mixture of federally and privately owned and operated facilities, some of which are under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Sponsored by the Water Power Technologies Office, ORNL initiated the National Hydropower Asset Assessment Program in 2010 to integrate and improve upon the capabilities of diverse energy–water geospatial data to advance hydropower research and
