Characterization and Modeling of Drought and Associated Hydropower Extremes to Better Inform Short- and Long-Term Electricity Resource Planning
Reliable hydropower depends on knowing when and where water and energy supplies may be at risk. Currently, there are no broadly accessible tools that can inform of complex drought impacts across the diverse energy resource sectors operating in our nation’s watersheds, particularly hydropower. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, collaborating with Argonne National Laboratory, NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), and NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information’s Drought.gov team, will create new ways to measure and understand how droughts affect water resources and hydropower generation, looking at variables like precipitation, soil moisture, river flows, and reservoir levels. This project will develop a new suite of hydropower drought monitoring and outlook products, as well as a super-ensemble gridded climate-water-power dataset for long-term planning, designed to help system operators, water managers, planners, and decision-makers anticipate, prepare for, and communicate drought and associated hydropower extremes. These tools will include:
- A hydropower drought monitoring product that characterizes current and emerging hydrologic extremes and potential hydropower impacts to better identify “energy droughts” that could impact power grid operations and other energy services.
- A hydropower drought outlook product to deliver probabilistic forecasts of hydropower production on a seasonal basis across the contiguous U.S. The outlooks will be resolved at different scales, ranging from a river basin perspective to scales relevant to grid management.
This project emphasizes working closely with stakeholders and partners across regional drought early warning systems to ensure the tools and data products developed are useful, easy to understand, and widely adopted by those who need them for drought planning and decision-making.
For additional information, please contact Elizabeth Ossowski at elizabeth.ossowski@noaa.gov.
Research Snapshot
Nathalie Voisin and Vincent Tidwell, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
What to expect from this research
- This project will improve understanding of drought impacts on hydropower at scales relevant for multi-institutional water management and electricity adequacy planning. The team will develop new ways to characterize and measure how droughts affect water resources and the power grid, considering various drought metrics and their influence on hydropower generation.
- The team will develop a new Hydropower Drought Outlook product, providing seasonal probabilistic forecasts of hydropower production across the continental U.S. This outlook will be useful for anticipating and managing potential shifts in hydropower services under drought conditions.
- This project will provide comprehensive data for long-term energy planning by delivering datasets that combine climate, power, and water information. These datasets will be power-system-ready with guidance on the use of specific sub-samples for best addressing future resource planning.
