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Improving Hydropower Benefits by Linking Environmental Decisions and Power System Trade-offs Through Flow Release Decisions [HydroWIRES]
Lead Companies
ORNL, PNNL, ANL, INL, NREL
Lead Researcher (s)
- Brenda Pracheil, pracheilbm@ornl.gov
Hydropower has a new and potentially important role in enhancing resilience of the electric system due to its ability to generate power without inputs from the grid. It is imminently important to understand if hydropower can have the necessary operational flexibility to provide these services given environmental flow requirements placed on the fleet. Environmental flow requirements included in Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) hydropower licenses are an important component to preserving and, in some cases, restoring ecological function and services provided by riverine ecosystems. While environmental flow requirements in a FERC license may improve outcomes such as water quality, fish habitat, or recreation, they may limit the operational flexibility of hydropower plants, narrowing their ability to respond to the grid. Defining linkages between flow requirements and specific environmental outcomes is essential to not only producing favorable environmental outcomes, but also to enabling greater operational flexibility within a given hydropower facility. This project will provide pathways for this co-optimization in hydropower systems by quantitatively linking power system and environmental outcomes through the common hub of flow decisions. It is anticipated that the co-optimization framework created in this project will provide a guide for designing environmental flow requirements that create value propositions for a diversity of stakeholders in FERC licensing proceedings. Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Interconnect Integration and Markets
Research Sub-Category
Hydraulic Optimization
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
TBD
- Conventional Hydro
Improving Hydropower Representation in Power System Models [HydroWIRES]
Lead Companies
PNNL
Lead Researcher (s)
- Abhishek Somani, abhishek.somani@pnnl.gov
This project will provide a critical update to dynamic models of hydropower generators that were developed in the 1960s and 1970s. Researchers will also develop tools that provide an accurate, updated representation of water availability and hydropower generation constraints in different models. These accurate representations will allow will give system planners and operators a more realistic understanding of operating reserves, resulting in fewer unexpected outages. Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Interconnect Integration and Markets
Research Sub-Category
Transmission Services
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
TBD
- Conventional Hydro
Improving predictions of scour in the vicinity of vegetation in habitat rehabilitation areas
Lead Companies
Bureau of Reclamation
Lead Researcher (s)
- Daniel Dombrowski
How can ecohydraulic modeling capabilities be improved by enhancing capability to predict scour in support of habitat and riparian rehabilitation projects? Multi-dimensional hydraulic, sediment, and habitat modeling are now routinely requested by project offices in order to meet demands for quantitative evaluation of alternative restoration designs. The complexity of ecohydraulic processes requires improvements in ability to predict interactions that effect localized patterns. Ability to better predict scour that will affect vegetation recruitment and removal, to the benefit or detriment of habitat rehabilitation projects, is vitally important to guide designers in order to ensure long-term success. The benefit of the project will be in producing a more useful tool for restoration practitioners to use in evaluating alternative designs.
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Environmental and Sustainability
Research Sub-Category
Shoreline and Riparian Resources
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
2020
- Conventional Hydro
Improving the Representation of Hydrologic Processes and Reservoir Operations in Production Cost Models [HydroWIRES]
Lead Companies
NREL
Lead Researcher (s)
- Greg Stark, greg.stark@nrel.gov
Although there have been many advances in PCM techniques over the past decade, the representation of hydropower operations has remained relatively rudimentary. Hydropower operational constraints (e.g., equipment, water use priorities and rules, environmental constraints) are not easily characterized in unit commitment and economic dispatch models. Uncertainties involved with hydropower planning also do not align well with grid operation methodologies. These misalignments make it difficult for grid operations models to comprehensively value and make the best use of the flexibility available with hydropower generation. To address these challenges, NREL will lead integration of intraday and day-ahead grid operations models with a river basin model, enabling a global optimization across both grid and reservoir operations. The lab will also use stochastic hydropower forecasts combined with progressive hedging to perform multi-stage, multi-time period optimization. This allows the combined grid and water model to value multiple timescales and uncertainties in a single optimization, enabling more accurate value of real-time flexibility to help balance supply and demand under different scenarios while enforcing precise, long-term water level constraints. In essence, the project will help to improve both grid and water system resilience while making better use of the water throughout the season.
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Interconnect Integration and Markets
Research Sub-Category
Hydraulic Optimization
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
TBD
- Conventional Hydro
Improving the robustness of southwestern US water supply forecasting
Lead Companies
Bureau of Reclamation
Lead Researcher (s)
- Dagmar Llewellyn
This research will address the overarching question of whether observed past climate trends have induced sufficient non-stationarity in climate and hydrologic systems in the western US to alter their predictability, which has consequences for water management. Key question include the following: When and where in the western US are hydroclimate trends and/or decadal variability leading to systematic biases in statistical and model-based waters supply forecasts? What practical adjustments can be made to current forecasting approaches to make seasonal water supply forecasts robust in the face of such phenomena? In particular, can hydrologic sensitivities to temperature be accounted for by leveraging operational temperature forecasts as streamflow predictors or weighting factors in conventional seasonal forecasting procedures? What are the marginal benefits of improvements in seasonal streamflow predictions for water management in the Upper Rio Grande River basin?
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Interconnect Integration and Markets
Research Sub-Category
Hydraulic Forecasting
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
2021
- Conventional Hydro
Improving Timing and Volume of Hydrosystem Inflow
Lead Companies
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Lead Researcher (s)
- Mark Wigmosta
This project provides a proof of concept to identify the potential of forest restoration to improve inflows to the hydrosystem that may be beneficial to salmon habitat and increase power production.
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Water Conveyance
Research Sub-Category
Hydraulic Optimization
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
TBD
- Conventional Hydro
Improving volume forecasting tools for snow dominated basins
Lead Companies
Bureau of Reclamation
Lead Researcher (s)
- Joel Fenolio
In 2018, the GP Region developed the PyCast Software application to address some of the aforementioned issues. The software provides an interactive tool that allows users to search-for and download relevant hydrologic datasets and develop well performing statistical runoff forecast equations using a variety of regression techniques. The software uses a set of novel search algorithms to find skillful and predictive forecast equations using from the complete set of hydrologic data, and allows users to analyze groups of forecast equations for similarities and outliers. This project seeks to: (a) evaluate the capabilities of the PyCast software, (b) develop additional functionality for the program, and (c) determine how remote sensing products developed in other S&T projects can improve forecast skill. The software will be evaluated by generating hindcasts in GP and PN basins, as well as conducting real-time forecasting during the 2019, 2020, and 2021 seasons. Developers from the PN and GP regions will continue to develop the software, train users, gather user input and suggestions, and add additional features and compatibility. New snow water equivalent (SWE) and snow covered area datasets proposed under two concurrent GP and MP S&T projects will be incorporated into the software and the resulting forecasts will be compared to traditional snow products from the NRCS.
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Interconnect Integration and Markets
Research Sub-Category
Hydraulic Forecasting
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
2021
- Conventional Hydro
Increasing Operational Flexibility of Francis Turbines at Low Head Sites, Through Analytical and Empirical Solutions [HydroWIRES]
Lead Companies
GE Global Research
Lead Researcher (s)
- Miaolei Shao, Miaolei.shao@ge.com
As operation of turbines outside the operational range recommended by the original manufacturer is more demanding for the machine, significant operational ranges are not included in typical operations planning. Enabling a broader operational range (even temporarily, for a few minutes or hours) offers an opportunity to upgrade dispatch strategy, increase flexibility, and increase support for the grid reliability and resilience. The overall goal of this project is to demonstrate the potential to increase the operational flexibility of installed low head Francis turbine driven hydropower-plants. Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Powerhouse Equipment
Research Sub-Category
Turbine
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
TBD
- Conventional Hydro
Inflow Forecast Competition
Lead Companies
CEATI International
Lead Researcher (s)
- #0434
In order to better understand recent developmnets with AI related to forecasting water, this project will perform a yearlong competition between five forecast methods, with a live website for members to view the verification results on a daily basis.
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Interconnect Integration and Markets
Research Sub-Category
Hydraulic Forecasting
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
Expected 2022
- Conventional Hydro
Influence of Deregulated Electricity Markets on Hydropower Generation and Downstream Flow Regime
Lead Companies
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Lead Researcher (s)
- Jordan Kern
Hydropower producers face a future beset by unprecedented changes in the electric power industry, including the rapid growth of installed wind power capacity and a vastly increased supply of natural gas due to horizontal hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”). There is also increased concern surrounding the potential for climate change to impact the magnitude and frequency of droughts. These developments may significantly alter the financial landscape for hydropower producers and have important ramifications for the environmental impacts of dams. Incorporating wind energy into electric power systems has the potential to affect price dynamics in electricity markets and, in so doing, alter the short-term financial signals on which dam operators rely to schedule reservoir releases. Chapter 1 of this doctoral dissertation develops an integrated reservoir-power system model for assessing the impact of large scale wind power integration of hydropower resources. Chapter 2 explores how efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of electric power systems by using wind energy to displace fossil fuel-based generation may inadvertently yield further impacts to river ecosystems by disrupting downstream flow patterns. Increased concern about the potential for climate change to alter the frequency and magnitude of droughts has led to growing interest in “index insurance” that compensates hydropower producers when values of an environmental variable (or index), such as reservoir inflows, crosses an agreed upon threshold (e.g., low flow conditions). Chapter 3 demonstrates the need for such index insurance contracts to also account for changes in natural gas prices in order to be cost-effective. Chapter 4 of this dissertation analyzes how recent low natural gas prices (partly attributable to fracking) have reduced the cost of implementing ramp rate restrictions at dams, which help restore subdaily variability in river flows by limiting the flexibility of dam operators in scheduling reservoir releases concurrent with peak electricity demand.
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Interconnect Integration and Markets
Research Sub-Category
Hydraulic Forecasting
Status
complete
Completion Date
2014
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Contact Marla Barnes at: marla@hydro.org