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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.

Aquifer Storage as a Core Strategy for Energy-Water Resilience: Near and Long-Term Development Across U.S. Regions

This research area primarily addresses the "Energy for Water" focus area. Depleted aquifers pose serious economic liabilities if left as is, however, they are a core asset for long term water storage throughout the US. Current efforts to store surface water, while successful are s...

Ulrich, C., Nico, P., Arora, B., Zhang, Y., Singhal, A., Robinson, G., and Stokes-Draut, J.

Minimizing Costs and Risk for Rural Water Systems

Many rural and remote populations either lack access to treated water supplies or are served by water systems that are at risk from increasing contaminant concentrations, aging infrastructure, unreliable supplies, and/or groundwater depletion. Recent research has shown that these ...

Hendrickson, T., Rao, P., Stokes-Draut, J., Gonzalez, S., and Fiske, P.

Integrated Energy-Water Data for Cross-Sector Resilience

Disjointed management of water and energy systems has created systemic vulnerabilities in the United States, particularly as aging infrastructure, population and industrial growth, and severe weather events strain both sectors. High-quality, standardized datasets like those provid...

Hodson, A., Stokes-Draut, J., Chini, C., Rao, P., and Semrod, K.

Integrated Water-Energy Resilience Research and Testbeds

Water availability increasingly constrains the reliability and flexibility of water-dependent energy systems, including hydropower, thermoelectric generation, and grid operations. Hydrologic extremes, shifting demand, aging infrastructure, and cross-sector pressures are intensifyi...

Negron-Juarez, R., Amusat, O., Koven, C., and Viers, J.

Harnessing water system flexibility for grid resilience

With new critical infrastructure that require uninterrupted power supplies (such as data centers that support the AI boom) and a rising share of intermittent generation sources on the grid, there is a growing need for flexibility in grid resources which can ramp up or down quickly...

Szinai, J., and Callaway, D.