Hydropower Resource Potential
DOE has completed a resource assessment for 49 states (no report was generated for Delaware because of scarce resources). The completed work has identified 5,677 sites in the United States with undeveloped capacity of about 30,000 MW. By comparison, today there is about 80,000 MW of hydroelectric generating plants in the United States.
To learn more about how much electricity hydropower could potentially generate in the United States, please see the State Resource Assessment Report on the Idaho National Laboratory Web site.
The hydropower team is currently assessing available sites that could use low-head, low-power technology. Low-head, low-power technologies require 30 feet of head (standing water height) or less and they provide generating capacity of 1 megawatt or less. Low-head, low-power resource assessment reports are available the Resource Assessment page on the Idaho National Laboratory Web site.