Hydropower

Representative Technology

In the 2020 ATB, CAPEX is shown for four representative non-powered dam plants and four representative new stream-reach development plants. CAPEX estimates for all identified hydropower potential (~700 NPD and ~8,000 NSD) results in a CAPEX range that is much broader than that shown in the ATB. It is unlikely all the resource potential will be developed because of the very high costs for some sites. For the 2020 ATB, all potential NPD and NSD sites are first binned by both head and capacity. Analysis of these bins provided groupings that represent the most realistic conditions for future hydropower deployment. The design values of these four reference NPD and four reference NSD plants are shown in the table below. The full range of resource and design characteristics is summarized in the ATB data spreadsheet. The reference plants shown below were developed using the average characteristics (weighted by capacity) of the resource plants within each set of ranges. For example, NPD 1 is constructed from the capacity-weighted average values of NPD sites with 3–30 feet of head and 0.5–10 MW of capacity. The weighted-average values are used as input to the cost formulas (O'Connor, Zhang, et al., 2015) in order to calculate site CAPEX and O&M costs. Regional cost effects and distance-based spur line costs are not estimated.

Upgrade potential becomes available in the ReEDS model at the relicensing date, plant age (50 years), or both. For this reason, hydropower-specific upgrade projections are not included in the 2020 ATB.