The Department of Energy (DOE) recently released a report on the nation’s hydropower sector, indicating that generation and storage capacity could increase by nearly 50 percent between now and 2050, given the right conditions.
Titled “Hydropower Vision: A New Chapter for America’s First Renewable Electricity Source,” the report examines the future of hydropower in the U.S. and said the future will be bright if technological advancements, innovative market mechanisms and the focus on environmental sustainability continue to progress.“Hydropower has provided clean, affordable and reliable electricity in the United States for more than a century, and pumped-storage complements today’s rapidly growing variable technologies such as wind and solar,” Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said. “The Hydropower Vision report clearly shows an expanded role for hydropower and pumped storage in our clean-energy future.”
In particular, the report highlighted advances in pumped-storage, which will enable the hydropower sector to provide flexibility and reliability when used in conjunction with wind and solar energy.
The department also recently made nearly $10 million available to fund projects to develop technologies that would make it cheaper and faster to deploy pumped-storage hydropower and non-powered dams, which currently represent 97 percent of the country’s dams.
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