Impacts of Potential Future Droughts on Electricity Generation

In 2011, the state of Texas experienced the worst single-year drought on record. This recent extreme climate event raised questions as to how future droughts might impact ERCOT operations. To improve our understanding of potential risks of electricity generation curtailment due to drought, an impact analysis was performed with a series of modeling tools including climate downscaling, competitive water-use calculator, hydrologic model for various hydrologic processes, and power-plant specific models. This presentation will demonstrate the predicted effects of potential future droughts on power generation at a local level of the USGS 8-digit watersheds and power plants within the context of long-term transmission planning. The study identified three potential drought scenarios (single- and multiple-year droughts) based on historical drought records and projected climate changes from the GFDL and the PCM global climate models, for greenhouse gas emission scenarios A1B, A2, and B1 defined by the IPCC. The potential impacts under these three drought scenarios were evaluated with a hydrologic model constructed for the Texas-Gulf river basin. The Texas-Gulf hydrologic model incorporates competitive water uses, climate forcing data corresponding to each of drought scenarios, and 125 reservoirs that are currently supporting water withdrawal for various sectors and cooling water for power generation. The hydrologic responses to drought scenarios predicted for each of the USGS 8-digit watersheds (such as evapotranspiration, soil water, water yield from watersheds, stream flow, and water storage in reservoirs) provide a bases to assess if power plants potentially at risk of being of derated and watersheds are vulnerable to droughts. The key findings from this study will help to improve understanding of spatial distribution of power plants at risk and vulnerable watersheds as well as the scale of potential reduction of electricity generation. Beyond impacts to the existing fleet of power plants, the results also provide insights to the sitting of future power plants to support the ERCOT long-term transmission planning.