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Supporting adoption of advanced forecast informed reservoir operations tools to improve agricultural and municipal water and energy outcomes

Expanding the use of advanced forecast-informed reservoir operations tools can optimize or improve water delivery and storage for energy generation, irrigation, and municipal uses. Advanced forecast-informed data and tools are increasingly being integrated into large-scale reservo...

Jorgensen, J., Giovando, J., Pracheil, B., Hou, H., and Niazi, H.

Hybrid Bioenergy and Hydropower Systems: Leveraging Heterogeneous Biomass and Wastes from Watersheds

Sandia National Laboratories and Idaho National Laboratory (INL) explore the water-for-energy nexus in this white paper, focusing on the impact of heterogeneous watershed waste materials on hydropower facilities. They identify key challenges--such as pile burning, wildfires, and d...

Quiroz-Arita, C., and Paudel, R.

Hardening Forested Watersheds to Wildfire to Enhance Downstream Water Quality for Critical Energy Infrastructure

This white paper focuses on water-for-energy stability, emphasizing the risks to energy infrastructure from water quality impacts due to severely burned forested watersheds. The primary challenge is that energy production in the U.S. is vulnerable to surface water quality, with hi...

Crockett, J., and Krofcheck, D.

Distributed Pumped Hydro for Sustainable Energy-Water Resilience with Vertical Agriculture

This white paper focuses on water for energy and energy for water and food security. Pumped Hydro energy storage systems have been utilized for over 100 years to offer many advantages to grid management including long life, high efficiency, low maintenance, dispatchable electrici...

Bibeault, M., Sevanto, S., Hanson, D., and Akil, A.

Agentic Optimization for Resilience in Hydropower Reservoir Systems

The growing electricity demand in the U.S. requires a resilient energy strategy. Hydropower is a major component of that strategy but is subject to environmental and human stressors that impact its dependability. AI-driven reinforcement learning, called "Agentic" learning, presen...

Schwenk, J., Garcia-Cardona, C., Bennett, K., Singh, S., and Brelsford, C.

High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) effects on Energy-Water resilience

Executive Order 13865 emphasizes the need to focus on critical infrastructure resilience to high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) effects, indicating that simulation of EMP effects on both energy and water systems need to be studied. The key technical challenges in assessing ...

Tabarez, J., Barnes, A., and Nelson, E.

Water for Baseload Power-A Revamp of the Nation's Nuclear Water Use Data

Providing approximately 20% of total U.S. electricity generation each year from a fleet of only 54 plants (94 reactors) nationwide, the nuclear sector is characterized by large and locally impactful power generating facilities. About half of existing reactors rely on once-through ...

Turner, S., Siddik, M., Montgomery, C., and Marston, L.