Supporting Resources

  1. Natural inter-annual variability results in periods of high and low water availability that impacts hydropower. While droughts are expected to be more intense and frequent, the projection for the Northwest forecasts indicate more water and hydropower in general.
    1. Sources:
      1. RMJOC2 report 
        1. https://www.bpa.gov/-/media/Aep/power/hydropower-data-studies/rmjoc-ll-report-part-l.pdf
        2. https://www.bpa.gov/-/media/Aep/power/hydropower-data-studies/rmjoc-ll-report-part-ll.PDF
      2. Secure Water Act
        1. Kao, S.-C., M. Ashfaq, D. Rastogi, S. Gangrade, R. Uría Martínez, A. Fernandez, G. Konapala, N. Voisin, T. Zhou, W. Xu, H. Gao, B. Zhao, and G. Zhao (2022), The Third Assessment of the Effects of Climate Change on Federal Hydropower, ORNL/TM-2021/2278, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN. https://doi.org/10.2172/1887712
  2. Droughts do not impact all the regions at the same time.
    1. Source: Turner et al. 2022 Drought impacts of hydroelectric power generation on the western United States
  3. Water management alleviates the inter-annual variability and impacts on hydropower generation to a certain extent
    1. Source: Zhou, T., Voisin, N. and Fu, T.  2018.  Non-stationary hydropower generation projections constrained by environmental and electricity grid operations over the western United States. Environmental Research Letters 13(7), 074035. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aad19f
  4. During a drought, the generation that would be provided by hydropower is displaced to other technologies which are more expensive and produce more greenhouse gas emissions.
    1. Sources:
      1. Voisin, N., Kintner-Meyer, M., Wu, D., Skaggs, R., Fu, T., Zhou, T., Nguyen, T. and Kraucunas, I.  2018.  Opportunities for Joint Water–Energy Management: Sensitivity of the 2010 Western U.S. Electricity Grid Operations to Climate Oscillations. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 99(2), 299-312. 
      2. Voisin, N., Tidwell, V., Kintner-Meyer, M. and Boltz, F.  2019.  Planning for sustained water-electricity resilience over the U.S.: Persistence of current water-electricity operations and long-term transformative plans. Water Security 7, 100035. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasec.2019.100035
  5. The regional imports/exports of electricity between regions have been strategic to leverage resources like hydropower and overall decrease the reliance on more expensive technologies and alleviate green house gas emissions. 
    1. Source: Voisin, N., Kintner-Meyer, M., Wu, D., Skaggs, R., Fu, T., Zhou, T., Nguyen, T. and Kraucunas, I.  2018.  Opportunities for Joint Water–Energy Management: Sensitivity of the 2010 Western U.S. Electricity Grid Operations to Climate Oscillations. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 99(2), 299-312. 
  6. Inter-annual variability in water availability results in +/-10% in greenhouse gas emission. In a normal water year, hydropower results in 10% less GHG emissions than during a drought year. With resources adequacies of the power grid based on a dry year, it means that hydropower displaces between 10 to 20% in GHG emissions in a normal to wet year respectively.
    1. Source: Voisin et al. 2018, based on simulations of power grid operations under 50 years of climate with a 2010 power grid infrastructure 
  7. During a drought, hydropower still contributes largely to the overall generation (Source: Turner et al. 2022).  Hydropower also maintains critical services to the power grid to meet peak hour demand (Voisin et al. 2021)

Source: Voisin N., S. Turner, G.E. Carrington, and W. Fields. 2021. Hydropower Value - Chelan PUD Case Study. PNNL-28481. Richland, WA: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (https://www.pnnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/PNNL-33212.pdf)