U.S. Hydropower Fleet Has Upside Power and Storage Potential
ORNL researchers found that U.S. hydropower grew by 1.5 gigawatts to 79.6 GW over the past decade, thus holding on to its seven percent share of U.S. power supply. In so doing it is offsetting roughly 200 million metric tons of carbon emissions per year, equivalent to taking more than 42 million cars off the road.
Most growth has come through upgrading the capacity of existing hydropower plants, backed by $6 billion in investment over the past decade. And there is room for far more growth without adding any large dams. Energy blog Fierce Energy this week trumpeted the report’s finding that “an astonishing 77 GW of hydropower remains untapped.”
21.6 GW of storage capacity in 42 existing pumped hydro plants “make up the overwhelming majority (97%) of utility-scale electricity storage in the United States.”
Hydropower’s growth potential is a mix of further upgrades, smaller run-of-river projects that squeeze power from seasonally heavy water flows, and the addition of power generating equipment to some of the more than 80,000 non-powered dams in the U.S. (which currently focus exclusively on other services such as flood control, irrigation, and drinking water storage). Powering just the 100 largest of those dams would add 8 GW to U.S. hydropower capacity.
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