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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.

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.

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.

Thermoelectric and Hydropower Drought Monitor and Outlook: Tools for more robust resource adequacy planning and management

The primary focus is on issues related to water for energy; specifically, how drought-impacted water supply limits the generation potential of hydropower and thermoelectric assets. Existing Challenge: Twenty-two droughts, each causing a billion dollars or more in damages have im...

Voisin, N., Tidwell, V., and Gerlich, J.

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.

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.

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