In July 2021, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office selected three industry partners for a notice of opportunity for technical assistance for improving hydropower’s value through informed decision making. The selected partners include Great River Hydro, LLC; Idaho Power Company; and Energy Exemplar.

The Great River Hydro, LLC project team will assess the value of inflow forecasting tools and practices associated with hydropower generating resources on the Connecticut River in New Hampshire and Vermont. Meanwhile, the Idaho Power Company project team will identify hydrogen production technologies that could be effectively deployed at a hydropower facility to meet energy storage capacity needs and potentially use the oxygen byproduct to help mitigate water quality conditions. Finally, the Energy Exemplar project team seeks to strengthen the capability of energy production models to assess economic impacts of hydropower capabilities, as well as peripheral impacts, such as bringing more renewables online, electric vehicle adoption, natural gas, energy storage, and other transmission impacts.

This work can equip these organizations, and the clean energy community broadly, with further understanding of how hydropower can most effectively support an evolving power system. The selected partners will begin their technical work with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory in 2022.