Investments Advance Hydropower's Contributions to the Nation's Rapidly Evolving Electric Grid

Selectees and Locations: 

• HydroWIRES Technical Assistance Program: Auburn University (Auburn, Alabama); Grand River Dam Authority (Chouteau, Oklahoma); Grant County Public Utility District (Ephrata, Washington); Natel Energy (Alameda, California); Power and Water Resources Pooling Authority (Tracy, California); Quidnet Energy Inc. (Houston, Texas); Rye Development (West Palm Beach, Florida); Tennessee Valley Authority (Knoxville, Tennessee); and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Washington, D.C.).
• Advancing Fish Passage and Protection Technologies Funding Opportunity: Electric Power Research Institute (Palo Alto, California); MarineSitu (Seattle, Washington); Natel Energy (Alameda, California); Percheron Power (Kennewick, Washington); University of California, Davis (Davis, California); and University of Massachusetts Amherst (Hadley, Massachusetts).
• Innovative Technologies to Enable Low-Impact Hydropower and Pumped Storage Hydropower Growth Funding Opportunity: Drops for Watts (Sagle, Idaho); Electric Power Research Institute (Palo Alto, California); Emrgy (Atlanta, Georgia); Quidnet Energy Inc. (Houston, Texas); RCAM Technologies (Boulder, Colorado); and Turbine Logic (Atlanta, Georgia).
• Stakeholder Insight Into Hydropower R&D Issues Funding Opportunity: American Rivers (Washington, D.C.).
• Hydropower Laboratory Call and Seedling Projects: Various U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories.

In Fiscal Year 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) made investments through three funding opportunities, a technical assistance program, and a series of projects at DOE national laboratories to advance hydropower technologies and their contributions to the electric grid as the United States transitions to a clean energy system.

In December 2022, WPTO announced $5.6 million for hydropower projects at five DOE national laboratories. Funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, 13 projects focus on work related to fish passage, hydrologic system science and climate change, hydropower component wear and fatigue modeling, and cybersecurity for hydropower and dams. Another 21 projects are "Seedlings," supported through WPTO's Seedling and Sapling program to encourage and provide short-term funding to new and innovative research ideas at the national laboratories. These projects focus on basin-scale monitoring and modeling, powering dams without power-generating infrastructure, and other topics.

WPTO selected a $3.7 million project, also funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, in March 2023 that focused on deepening relationships and trust between hydropower and river stakeholders to better incorporate community priorities in hydropower R&D activities.

In June 2023, WPTO announced selections for $4.3 million in technical assistance projects through the HydroWIRES Initiative to aid the hydropower community in making well-informed decisions while achieving broader benefits for the electricity grid. These 10 technical assistance projects provide pumped storage hydropower (PSH) developers and other stakeholders with DOE national laboratory expertise and capabilities to address valuation hurdles in PSH project development and help the broader hydropower community address specific challenges related to the HydroWIRES mission.

In September 2023, WPTO selected more than $13 million for several research and development projects. The funding, provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will support projects focused on creating technologies to retrofit non-powered dams, advancing and developing technologies that could accelerate PSH deployment, and supporting research and development at emerging organizations not extensively engaged with WPTO.

Also in September 2023, WPTO announced more than $6.3 million for six research and development projects to improve fish passage and protection technologies and reduce the environmental impacts of hydropower on species and ecosystems.