U.S. Department of Energy writes new chapter for hydropower vision

The U.S. Department of Energy has issued a far ranging evaluation of the future of hydropower in the United States. The backdrop of the report is continued national desires for low-cost, low-carbon, renewable energy.

The report finds that hydropower’s contribution to electrical supply could grow from 101 gigawattts (GW) of capacity to 150 GW by 2050. Such a jump is the equivalent of supplying enough new power to meet the needs of over 35 million homes. Along with this would be billions in savings from avoided greenhouse emissions. The report postulates that these gains could occur through technological evolution, low-cost financing and embracing environmental sustainability. Click here for report.

The Northwest, which relies on hydropower to generate well over half of its electricity, is already spending millions of dollars annually to upgrade and optimize generation and operational performance at hydropower projects. The Northwest is also familiar and continues to investigate efforts to install hydropower in irrigation canals and non-powered dams.

What would be new to the Northwest is the full embrace given by the report to deploying and integrating pumped storage technology into the mix. Currently, the Northwest has only one pumped storage project, the John Keys III Pump Generation Plant at Grand Coulee Dam.

The report concludes that 35.5 GW of new pumped storage could be developed nationally by combining advanced technology and low cost financing. This represents 73 percent of potential hydropower gains envisioned by the report. There are eight prospective pumped-storage projects in the Northwest.

Pumped storage projects take water passing through a project area and “pump” it to an additional reservoir during off-peak hours. Water is then released back through the turbines when the demand and value of power is highest. A key benefit of pumped storage is its ability to come on and off line quickly, thus making it an ideal way to support variable generation resources such as wind and solar.