Forty-year hydropower generation reanalysis for Conterminous United States

TL;DR

This paper introduces an improved dataset for hydropower generation in the U.S., offering detailed historical data and climate-related insights.

Contribution

RectifHydPlus enhances historical hydropower data with a hydrological control dataset and daily water release time series.

Findings

RectifHydPlus provides updated monthly generation estimates for 590 hydropower plants from 1980 to 2019.

The dataset includes a hydrological control to assess the impact of historical water availability on generation.

Daily-resolution spill-adjusted water release time series are provided for each dam.

Abstract

First published in 2022, the RectifHyd dataset provides hydrologically consistent estimates of monthly net generation for approximately 1,500 hydropower plants in the United States, addressing a gap in industrial surveys that have collected monthly generation data from only ~10% of plants post-2003. Here we present RectifHydPlus—an extended and enhanced dataset that improves on both the proxy information and temporal downscaling methodology adopted in RectifHyd. In addition to providing updated estimates of historical monthly generation for 590 plants with >10 MW nameplate capacity from 1980 through 2019, RectifHydPlus adds a hydrological control dataset that isolates the influence of historical water availability on generation. The new hydrological control dataset is suited to applications seeking to represent the capabilities of the contemporary fleet subject to historical interannual variability in climate. RectifHydPlus also includes a forty-year, daily-resolution, spill-adjusted water release time series for each dam, allowing users to aggregate generation estimates to the desired temporal resolution.

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