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Conventional HydroBasin-Scale Opportunity Assessment Initiative: Background Literature Review
Lead Companies
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Lead Researcher (s)
- Bo Saulsbury
As called for in the March 2010 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Hydropower, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), environmental stakeholders, and the hydropower industry are collaborating to identify opportunities to simultaneously increase electricity generation and improve environmental services in river basins of the United States. New analytical tools provide an improved ability to understand, model, and visualize environmental and hydropower systems. Efficiencies and opportunities that might not be apparent in site-by-site analyses can be revealed through assessments at the river-basin scale. Information from basin-scale assessments could lead to better coordination of existing hydropower projects, or to inform siting decisions (e.g., balancing the removal of some dams with the construction of others), in order to meet renewable energy production and environmental goals. Basin-scale opportunity assessments would inform energy and environmental planning and address the cumulative effects of hydropower development and operations on river basin environmental quality in a way that quantifies energy-environment tradeoffs. Opportunity assessments would create information products, develop scenarios, and identify specific actions that agencies, developers, and stakeholders can take to locate new sustainable hydropower projects, increase the efficiency and environmental performance of existing projects, and restore and protect environmental quality in our nation's river basins. Government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGO) have done significant work to understand and assess opportunities for both hydropower and environmental protection at the basin scale. Some initiatives have been successful, others less so, and there is a need to better understand the legacy of work on which this current project can build. This background literature review is intended to promote that understanding.
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Regulatory Management Process
Research Sub-Category
Environmental Impact
Status
complete
Completion Date
2010
Pumped StorageCommissioning Prize for Pump Storage
Lead Companies
PNNL
Lead Researcher (s)
- Bo Saulsbury
Furthering Advancements to Solve Time to Commissioning Prize (FAST Commissioning Prize) that will seek innovative ideas on ways to reduce the time and costs associated with PSH from concept to commissioning. PNNL supports the technical analysis, as well as the voucher program to be supplied to prize finalists and winners.
Technology Application
Pumped Storage
Research Category
Regulatory Management Process
Research Sub-Category
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
TBD
- Conventional Hydro
Data-driven benchmarking models
Lead Companies
Hydropower Research Institute
Lead Researcher (s)
- HRI Technical Steering Committee
The goal of this work is to leverage HRI's aggregated data set to benchmark units or a fleet to normal operational behavior defined by the entire operational data set.
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Regulatory Management Process
Research Sub-Category
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
2022
Marine EnergyEnvironmental Compliance Cost Analysis (Marine Energy Environmental Compliance)
Lead Companies
Sandia National Laboratories
Lead Researcher (s)
- Jesse Roberts
The marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) industry has a vital role in the U.S. clean energy strategy by providing a renewable, domestic energy source that can help meet the U.S. national demand by offsetting the need for traditional power sources that support foreign dependencies and can have detrimental long-term impacts on the environment that put the U.S. at risk. As the MHK industry evolves with new technologies, improved business model paradigms, and expected grid features (i.e., reliability, resilience, flexibility, sustainability, affordability, and security), costs for environmental compliance need to be delineated and reduced to realize MHK’s potential contributions to the U.S. energy portfolio. Licensing, permitting, and other compliance process costs are not well understood; therefore, strategies to reduce costs cannot be formulated and implemented effectively. The important issue addressed here is to delineate and quantify costs for permitting and licensing, including monitoring and adaptive management, and to develop cost reduction pathways and strategies that enable emerging MHK technologies to attain utility scale contributions to our nation’s renewable energy portfolio.
Technology Application
Marine Energy
Research Category
Regulatory Management Process
Research Sub-Category
Hydrokinetic
Status
complete
Completion Date
2021
- Conventional Hydro
Environmental, Economic and Social Trade-Offs of Hydropower Relicensing: A Case Study of the Yuba River Development Project
Lead Companies
University of California, Berkely
Lead Researcher (s)
- Joseph Rand
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Regulatory Management Process
Research Sub-Category
Environmental Impact
Status
complete
Completion Date
2018
- Conventional Hydro
- Conventional Hydro
Operational Alternative Evaluation for the 2014/2024 Columbia River Treaty Review in a Participatory Modeling Framework
Lead Companies
University of Idaho
Lead Researcher (s)
- Mark Cecchini-Beaver
Basin-scale water resource management entails consideration of competing— sometimes conflicting—operational goals and constraints. In the Columbia River Basin, legal, social, technological, and ecological changes suggest a need for a collaborative process to devise and select new water management strategies. Computer modeling for decision support offers a compelling method for using hydrologic simulation models as tools for engaging stakeholders in the process of envisioning, testing, and evaluating novel operational alternatives. This study details the process of developing a daily timestep simulation model of the mainstem Columbia and Kootenay Rivers and integrating the results of a survey to create operational alternatives that implement stakeholder priorities for river management. These alternatives are then modeled over a sixty-nine year period of record and compared to each other and a Base Case scenario using a suite of performance measures that provide information related to flood control, hydropower, instream flow, recreation, navigation, and shoreline goals. A key result of this comparison is that coordinated management of Canadian storage facilities can improve downstream ecological flow objectives at the cost of hydropower generation and certain shoreline objectives at Canadian reservoirs. Distributive and integrative solutions to these tradeoffs are proposed as potential opportunities to reshape the transboundary management regime of the Columbia River Treaty.
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Regulatory Management Process
Research Sub-Category
Water Management
Status
complete
Completion Date
2013
- Pumped Storage
PSH TES Tool
Lead Companies
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Lead Researcher (s)
- Mark Weimer
This project will develop a set of online tools that industry, regulators, and other stakeholders could adopt and use to advance PSH projects in the US. Current efforts include completing the process of defining the needs of industry and developing a PSH valuation tool.
Technology Application
Pumped Storage
Research Category
Regulatory Management Process
Research Sub-Category
Regulatory Process
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
TBD
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