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Unlocking Small-scale Hydropower using Water Infrastructure for National Energy Security

Reliable local energy generation and long-duration energy storage are critical to balancing peak demands and providing distributed emergency backup near both urban and rural populations. However, small-scale (< 10 MW) hydropower faces barriers, including siting, permitting, water ...

Stokes-Draut, J., Taylor, M., and Rao, P.

Adaptive 3D Printed Micro-Hydropower for Resilient Grids: Digital-to-Deployment Framework

We propose to enhance the resilience of the U.S. electricity grid by enabling the rapid, adaptive, and on-demand manufacturing of site-specific micro-to-small hydropower systems for low-head dams. This approach directly addresses the nation's untapped 85,000+ non-powered dams (NPD...

Kim, P., Chawla, K., Hassen, A., Roschli, A., Post, B., Saha, S., and Mueller, R.

Revolutionizing Water-Energy Infrastructure Resilience through Distributed Sensing and Digital Twins

This white paper addresses the intersection of Water for Energy and Energy for Water, proposing foundational technology to enhance the resilience and operational longevity of critical national assets, including hydropower facilities and marine energy systems. The core challenge i...

Luo, L.

An Energy-Water Nexus Foundation Model Ecosystem to Advance System Resiliency and Affordability

This white paper presents how an AI-driven foundation model ecosystem for hydropower and the electric grid, integrated with a large language model (LLM) agent can address the "Water for Energy" challenge and modernize coordinated planning and operations of the U.S. energy-water ne...

Kwon, J., Kim, K., Levin, T., and Botterud, A.

A Framework for Improving Locational Marginal Price Estimates for Technoeconomic Analysis of Hydropower Investments and Operational Decisions

The focus is on improving the analytics supporting hydropower investment decisions through the more accurate characterization of the locational marginal prices (LMPs) that will define future energy payments. Enhanced analytics around LMP prediction could also be used to improve op...

Balducci, P., DeSomber, K., and Zhou, Z.

Gaps Between Western U.S. Reservoir Inflows and Headwater Precipitation Timing, Amount, and Phase

Snowmelt from mountain headwater basins supplies approximately 80% of the runoff to reservoirs in the western United States (WUS), and is therefore a key component of western hydropower. Yet predicting runoff from hydrometeorological data in complex terrain (and its sensitivity to...

Rudisill, W., and Feldman, D.

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.

AI-Enhanced Hydropower Systems: Smart Dams for a Resilient Future

This paper focuses on water-energy, using AI for smart, holistic hydropower operations to enhance water for energy resilience. The existing challenges include (a) increasing demand for water and electricity, requiring a shift to flexible, real-time hydropower operations due to ch...

Varadharajan, C., Ajami, N., Brodie, E., Ciulla, F., Falco, N., Feldman, D., Newcomer, M., Dwivedi, D., Li, Y., Nakata, R., Nakata, N., Nico, P., Williams, K., Mahoney, M., Ramakrishnan, L., and Cholia, S.

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.

Advancing Industrial Sector Water Management for Energy Recovery in Water Supply, In-Process, and Discharge Systems

This paper addresses both water-for-energy and energy-for-water by integrating hydropower generation to improve industrial water system resilience. Conduit hydropower is produced by capturing flowing water under pressure in closed-pipe systems and converting the energy into usable...

Bhandari, I., Billings, B., DeNeale, S., Chu, A., and Meira, K.

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