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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.

Unlocking Hydropower Potential from Environmental Flows for Energy-Water Resilience

This white paper examines how mandated environmental flow (E-flow) releases at hydropower dams can be leveraged to generate renewable energy while maintaining ecological integrity. Environmental flows sustain aquatic ecosystems but often bypass turbines, representing lost generati...

DeNeale, S., Connor, M., and McManamay, R.

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.

Accounting for Water-Energy Co-Benefits of Floating Photovoltaics (FPV)

Floating photovoltaic projects, as well as those that span over waterways (i.e. canopy), present potential technological and economic advantages over ground-mounted systems that have fueled rapid global growth in installed capacity in recent years. Aside from expanding generation,...

Fluet-Chouinard, E., Jorgensen, J., Cotter, E., Niazi, H., Wild, T., Chalishazar, V., Pracheil, B., Griffiths, N., Hansen, C., and Chowdhury, K.

Forecast-Informed, Market-Responsive Conjunctive Operations for Multi-Reservoir Water-Energy Systems

The white paper, "Forecast-Informed, Market-Responsive Conjunctive Operations for Multi-Reservoir Water-Energy Systems" , addresses the water-for-energy and energy-for-water nexus by proposing a framework for co-optimizing hydropower and cascading reservoir operations alongside fl...

Pavicevic, M., Mork, E., Yu, A., Herman, J., Emmons, J., and Ploussard, Q.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.