Hydropower Role in a Power Grid with a High Proportion of Variable Renewables

Conference · Thu Sep 28 04:00:00 EDT 2023

OSTI ID:2007006

De Silva, Thushara; Jorgenson, Jennie; Veselka, Thomas; Ploussard, Quentin; Pracheil, Brenda

The importance of hydropower increases as the power grid evolves with the higher variable renewable contribution. As conventional thermal power plants are retired, the importance of hydropower contribution increases to balance the variability of solar and wind generation. However, reservoir water resources are constrained by multiple constraints, and variability of water inflow to the reservoirs creates limitations to dam water releases for power grid needs. Coordination of multiple tools, including water resources modeling, ecological modeling, and technical and economic power grid modeling, informs dam water releases. Better representation of ecological constraints and other water use details in the suit of power grid models are required to identify the hydropower flexibility to provide multiple power grid services. Impacts of water planning and hydropower operation changes to a power grid are better understood by production cost model simulations with technical and economic data, including unserved energy, reserve failures, transmission congestion to serve load, and local marginal price increases. Similarly, PCM simulation of current and future projected power grid information, including LMP, and carbon emission rates, informs short-term water release plans and long-term investments for power plant upgrades for technical and ecological needs. Hydropower operations of several case studies are simulated to understand operation patterns, revenue, water release decisions in multiple time scales (month, day, minutes), hydropower contracts scheduling, and water variability impacts.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Water Power Technologies Office
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308; AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 2007006
• Report Number(s): NREL/PR-6A40-86725; MainId:87500; UUID:1a26c6f7-d108-4a50-b1bd-e73ddd439331; MainAdminID:70766
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

HYDRO ENERGY
POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION
environmental
flexibility
hydropower
production cost models
reservoir
water