California’s hydropower system is composed of high and low elevation power plants. There are more than 150 high-elevation power plants, at elevations above 1,000 feet (300 m). Most have modest reservoir storage capacities, but supply roughly 74% of California’s in-state hydropower. The expected shift of runoff peak from spring to winter due to climate warming, resulting in snowpack reduction and increased snowmelt, might have important effects on power generation and revenues in California. The large storage capacities at low-elevation power plants provide flexibility to operations of these units under climate warming. However, with climate warming, the adaptability of the high-elevation hydropower system is in question as this system was designed to take advantage of snowpack, a natural reservoir.With so many high-elevation hydropower plants in California, estimation of climate warming effects by conventional simulation or optimization methods would be tedious and expensive. An Energy-Based Hydropower Optimization Model (EBHOM) was developed to facilitate practical climate change and other low-resolution system-wide hydropower studies, based on the historical generation data of 137 high-elevation hydropower plants for which the data were complete for 14 years. Employing recent historical hourly energy prices, the model was used to explore energy generation in California for three climate warming scenarios (dry warming, wet warming, and warming-only) over 14 years, representing a range of hydrologic conditions. The system is sensitive to the quantity and timing of inflows. While dry warming and warming-only climate changes reduce average hydropower revenues, wet warming could increase revenue. Re-operation of available storage and generation capacities help compensate for snowpack losses to some extent. Storage capacity expansion and to a lesser extent generation capacity expansion both increase revenues, although such expansions might not be cost-effective.

Hydropower dams play a critical role in the health of river ecosystems throughout the United States, and hundreds of these dams will be relicensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in the coming years. Such licenses lock in the operating and environmental protection requirements of such dams for periods of up to 50 years. Given the complex, dynamic nature of river ecosystems, as well as the impacts of climate change, there is pervasive scientific uncertainty about how to best manage dams for power production while protecting and enhancing environmental values such as water quality and fisheries. Unless dams are managed adaptively, with licenses that provide pathways for gathering and applying new knowledge and responding to changing conditions, we run the risk of locking in mistaken approaches and stymieing environmental improvements on our rivers for the next half century.

Introduction:

FERC’s Integrated Licensing Process (ILP) is applicable to both relicensing existing hydroelectric projects and developing new projects. FERC’s ILP was developed during a period when there were few applications being filed for new projects. Although applications for relicensings may likely continue to outnumber applications for new projects, the complexity and number of new projects being pursued into licensing has increased significantly in the past two years. New projects today include conventional small and medium-sized hydroelectric projects. Many are multiple use water and energy projects, which can be bundled with pumped storage and transmission. There are also growing numbers of new hydroelectric based technologies such as tidal and wave energy projects that require licensing and often multiple agency approvals.

This paper presents an overview and some of the key points of the 2009 Assessment of Waterpower Potential and Development Needs Report prepared by EPRI and can be found on their website www.epri.com. The assessment projects the amount of additional waterpower capacity that could be developed in the U.S. under conservative and aggressive scenarios. The middle ground or likely scenario is that with increased levels of research support and incentive programs, the U. S. can develop an additional 39,750 MW of waterpower capacity from existing conventional hydroelectric facilities and emerging waterpower technologies that access the energy potential of river, tidal, constructed waterway currents and the energy of ocean waves and thermal gradients.

Existing conventional hydropower generation represents 70 percent of the U.S. renewable energy generation (over 248,312 GWH) and the opportunity exists to expand this resource. The potential for waterpower expansion, at existing hydroelectric facilities, at dams without powerhouses, and from the emerging next generation of waterpower technologies, represents a substantial increase to the nation’s renewable domestic power supply. The 2007 estimate for waterpower that could be developed by 2025 exceeds the total wind capacity brought on line over the past 30 years (20,152 MW).

Hydro can out-compete fossil plants if you view the project in its entirety, not just as a dam and powerhouse.

Background information on history of hydropower in U.S., as well as attention paid to the Pacific Northwest, Intermountan West and New England regions. Policy of AFS is to promote the conservation and preservation of remaining free-flowing stream habitats in North America and to: 1. Encourage and support the development of comprehensice fisheries plans and management objectives. 2. Encourage further development and integration of standardized procedures in hydropower impact assessment. 3. Support better research to define critical impact thresholds for water quality parameters most commonly affected by hydropower projects. 4. Support the development of mitigation techniques and technologies intended to reduce or eliminate adverse impacts to fisheries resources from hydropower development 5. Encourage licensing agencies to establish a fund, either project-specific or pooled, that is sufficient to cover removal and restoration costs of nonfederal projects upon license termination. 6. AFS recomends that agencies consider relicensing under present environmental standards.

The most often heard claims in support of large scale hydroelectric development are: (1) hydropower generation is 'clean', (2) water flowing freely to the ocean is 'wasted', and (3) local residents (usually aboriginals) will benefit from the development. These three claims are critically examined using case histories from Canada and elsewhere in the world. The critique is based mainly on journal articles and books, material that is readily available to the public, and reveals that the three claims cannot be supported by fact. Nevertheless, large scale hydroelectric development continues on a worldwide basis. The public needs to be well informed about the environmental and social consequences of large scale hydroelectic development in order to narrow the gap between its wishes for environmental protection and what is really occurring.

Northern States Power Co. (NSP) is "tremendously excited about wind power" the utility's chairman said. In August 1992 NSP agreed to build or purchase 100MW of electricity from wind machines in southwestern Minnesota by 1998. As part of the compromise that allows NSP to store nuclear waste in large steel casks at Prairie Island, the State Legislature required the utility purchase 425MW of electricity from wind farms by 2002. The NSP chairman cautioned that there may be problems with transmission lines or other concerns, but he said the utility has enough time to work them out. A cooperative project was begun recently to collect data on wind speeds during the next two years at eight sites that have potential for large scale wind farms.

Results from a 1995 survey of utility company biologists indicate that aquatic biodiversity is an emerging and poorly understood issue. As a result, there is some confusion about what aquatic biodiverstiy actually is, and how we can best conserve it. Only one fourth (24%) of the respondents said their company has a stated environmental policy that addresses biodiversity. Many respondents indicate that over the years they have not specifically managed for biodiversity, but have been doing that though their efforts to assure balanced indigenous populations. While regulations are still the major driver for biological work, an increasing number of companies are involved in voluntary partnerships in managing water resources. Of these voluntary partnerships, 70% have biodiversity as a goal. Biodiversity is becoming an increasingly common subject of study, and a vast majority (75%) of the respondents suggested it should be a goal for utility resource management. Conservation of aquatic biodiversity is a complex task, and to date most aquatic efforts have been directed toward fish and macroinvertebrates. Ecological research and technological development performed by the utility industry have resulted in a number of successful biopreservation and biorestoration success stories. A common theme to preserving or enhancing aquatic biodiversity is preserving aquatic habitat. Increasingly, ecosystem management is touted as the most likely approach to achieve success in preserving aquatic biodiversity. Several utilities are conducting progressive work in implementing ecosystem management. This paper presents the potential interactions between power plants and biodiversity, an overview of aquatic biodiversity preservation efforts within the electric utility industry, more detail on the results of the survey, and recent initiatives in ecosystem management.

This report presents nearly 500 water value estimates for four withdrawal uses (domestic, irrigation, industrial processing, and thermoelectric power generation) and four instream uses (hydropower, recreation/fish and wildlife habitat, navigation, and waste disposal). The first section discusses important caveats for interpreting the data and the relevance of water values for achieving efficient use of the resource. Tables and graphs are used to summarize and help interpret the water-value data that have been converted to constant 1994 dollars. Section 3 presents the data by geographic region to illustrate how the values within a region vary among uses. Section 4 presents the data for individual water uses to illustrate how the values for specific uses vary within each of the 18water resources regions that comprise the conterminous United States. Information such as the location, year, and methodology used to derive each of the values are presented in the appendices along with each of the water value estimates. The data are organized by water resources region in Appendix B and by type of use in Appendix C.