In April 2019, the U.S. Department of Energy Water Power Technologies Office launched the HydroWIRES Initiative 1 to understand, enable, and improve hydropower and pumped storage hydropower's (PSH's) contributions to reliability, resilience, and integration in the rapidly evolving U.S. electric system. The unique characteristics of hydropower, including PSH, make it well suited to provide a range of storage, generation flexibility, and other grid services to support the cost-effective integration of variable renewable resources.The U.S. electric system is rapidly evolving, bringing both opportunities and challenges for the hydropower sector. Though increasing deployment of variable renewables such as wind and solar have enabled low-cost, clean energy in many U.S. regions, it has also created a need for resources that can store energy or quickly change their operations to ensure a reliable and resilient grid. Hydropower (including PSH) is not only a supplier of bulk, low-cost, renewable energy but also a source of large-scale flexibility and a force multiplier for other renewable power generation sources. Realizing this potential requires innovation in several areas, including understanding value drivers for hydropower under evolving system conditions, describing flexible capabilities and associated trade-offs associated with hydropower meeting system needs, optimizing hydropower operations and planning, and developing innovative technologies that enable hydropower to operate more flexibly.Research efforts under the HydroWIRES Initiative are designed to benefit hydropower owners and operators, independent system operators, regional transmission organizations, regulators, original equipment manufacturers, and environmental organizations by developing data, analysis, models, and technology research and development that can improve their capabilities and inform their decisions.More information about HydroWIRES is available at energy.gov/hydrowires.
