U.S. Department of Energy - Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

Water Power Program

Hydropower Market Acceleration and Deployment

At the Wanapum Dam on the Columbia River, a fish-friendly turbine runner that helps salmon smolts pass through the turbine is under testing.

Hydropower contributes significantly to the nation's renewable energy portfolio; over the last decade, the United States obtained nearly 7% of its electricity from hydropower sources. Already the largest source of renewable electricity in the United States, there remains a vast untapped resource potential in hydropower.  To achieve its vision of supporting 15% of our nation's electricity needs from water power by 2030, the Water Power Program works to address environmental and regulatory barriers that prevent significant amounts of deployment; to assess and quantify the value of hydropower to the nation's electric grid and its ability to integrate other variable renewable energy technologies; and to develop a vibrant U.S. hydropower workforce and research community.

In addition to conventional hydropower, pumped-storage hydropower (PSH) is important piece of DOE's renewable energy portfolio because it acts as utility-scale grid storage technology. DOE's Water Power Program can play an essential and catalytic role in demonstrating the benefits of PSH and its role in our nation's clean energy future as a renewable form of grid stabilization and a critical enabler for high penetration of variable renewables such as wind and solar.

Learn more about the Water Power Program's work in the following areas of hydropower market acceleration and deployment:

• Environmental Impacts and Mitigation
• Asset Management
• Grid Services
• Hydropower Market Acceleration and Deployment Accomplishments

Environmental Impacts and Mitigation

Hydropower can have adverse environmental impacts on fish populations and migrations, on water quality in reservoirs and downstream from dams, and on river habitats both upstream and downstream from dams. The Water Power Program works to design, develop, and test new ways of reducing these adverse impacts, which have slowed the development of new hydropower generation and improvements in operational flexibility. The program's focus areas include:

The Bonneville Dam fish ladders, located on the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington, provides safe passage for migrating fish.
Credit: iStockphoto.com.

• Fish passage issues — Research on the safe passage of fish through and around hydroelectric structures, including baseline measurements and new technology demonstrations in real-world applications to measure and predict indirect fish mortality and non-lethal injury rates.
• Instream flow requirements — Studies to better understand and predict the effects of variable stream flows on fish and wildlife, and synthesis and integration studies to gather data from experiences across multiple, existing projects.
• Greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs — Development, testing, and demonstration of methods to measure and predict greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs at hydropower projects in order to verify the technology's emission-avoiding capacity.
• Water quality — Water temperature and dissolved oxygen model development and demonstration that enables operators to better meet environmental mandates while increasing electricity generation.

The Cushman Dam, located on the Skokomish River in Washington, is one of several pre-existing facilities that received a technology update with assistance from the Water Power Program. Its new turbine/generator units add approximately 3.6 megawatts of annual generation.
Credit: The City of Tacoma Department of Public Utilities

Asset Management

Existing hydropower facilities in the United States show signs of deterioration, including declines in electricity generation, capacity factors, and facility availability. The data to evaluate these facilities, which include both federal and non-federal assets, are scattered and outdated. The Water Power Program is working with partners to integrate and update information in order to understand the causes and potential solutions to the large annual variation of hydropower generation.

Grid Services

Hydropower has the potential to increase the flexibility and stability of the U.S. electric grid and to support the integration of variable renewable resources. The Water Power Program seeks to maximize this potential value by developing and deploying technologies that increase operational flexibility, including pumped storage, as well as modifying regional computer models to better assess potential capacity expansions of pumped storage and facilitate introduction of other variable renewable resources into the market.

Market Acceleration and Deployment Accomplishments

The Water Power Program has numerous accomplishments in the areas of hydropower market acceleration and deployment. The projects described below highlight just a few of the program's recent successes in environmental impact and mitigation, asset management, and grid services R&D.

Working Together for Hydropower

Since the U.S. Department of the Army (through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), U.S. Department of Energy, and U.S. Department of the Interior signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Hydropower in 2010, these agencies advanced their mutual goals for the development of clean, reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable hydropower generation in the United States. The Water Power Program contributed significantly to a number of accomplishments including the completion of numerous hydropower resource assessments; the development of hydropower facility modernization and optimization tools; the demonstration of new hydropower generation technologies through collaborative research funding; the completion of a study on the effects of climate change on water availability for hydropower; and the establishment of a Federal Inland Hydropower Working Group with staff from 15 federal entities involved in hydropower.

To read more about the MOU for Hydropower, see the Two-Year Progress Report.

Identifying Win-Win Opportunities for Power and Environment

The Water Power Program is funding a team of national laboratories under the direction of the MOU for Hydropower to conduct water basin scale assessments to identify opportunities that allow basin stakeholders to generate more electricity, meet water demands, and enhance the environment in those areas. The first basin assessment was conducted in the Deschutes and Crooked River Basins in Oregon and consisted of extensive research, stakeholder outreach, and modeling. By the end of 2013, the basins will have a report on the team's findings along with a model to help basin stakeholders in future planning efforts. New basins will be assessed in the coming years in part of the Water Power Program's efforts to sustainably increase U.S. hydropower generation.

The Bear Swamp Hydroelectric Power Station, located on the Deerfield River in Massachusetts, is an example of a pumped-storage hydroelectric underground power station.
Credit: New England Power Company

Pumped-Storage Hydropower: Batteries for the Electric Grid

A team of DOE funded industry partners and national laboratories are developing a detailed model of the only feasible utility-scale storage technology, advanced pumped-storage hydropower, to analyze its technical capabilities to provide grid services, and to assess the value of these services under different market structures. The project will provide the most up-to-date characterization of pumped-storage yet, assessing its value and potential contribution to existing electricity generation. The research team aims to develop a publicly available model and disseminate the information to stimulate the hydropower industry and further strengthen investment and development of pumped-storage. The corresponding report will contain three parts:

• a review of existing hydroelectric turbine simulation models
• a model of adjustable speed pumped-storage hydro units
• a model of ternary pumped-storage units.