Climate change impact on operation of dams and hydroelectricity generation in the Northeastern United States
Abstract
We are using a large-scale, high-resolution, fully integrated hydrological/reservoir/hydroelectricity model to investigate the impact of climate change on the operation of 11037 dams and generation of electricity from 375 hydroelectric power plants in the Northeastern United States. Moreover, we estimate the hydropower potential of the region by energizing the existing non-powered dams and then studying the impact of climate change on the hydropower potential. We show that climate change increases the impact of dams on the hydrology of the region. Warmer temperatures produce shorter frozen periods, earlier snowmelt and elevated evapotranspiration rates, which when combined with changes in precipitation, are projected to increase water availability in winter but reduce it during summer. As a result, the water that is stored by dams will be more than ever a necessary part of the routine water systems operations to compensate for these seasonal imbalances. The function of dams as emergency water storage for creating drought resiliency will mostly diminish in the future. Building more dams to cope with the local impacts of climate change on water resources and to offset the increased drought vulnerability may thus be inevitable. Annual hydroelectricity generation in the region is 41 Twh. Our estimate of the annual hydropower potential of non-powered dams adds up to 350 Twh. Climate change may reduce hydropower potential from non-powered dams by up to 13% and reduce current hydroelectricity generation by up to 8% annually. Hydroelectricity generation and hydropower potential may increase in winter months and decline in months of summer and fall. These changes call for recalibration of dam operations and may raise conflict of interests in multipurpose dams.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMGC43C1172E
- Keywords:
-
- 0402 Agricultural systems;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCES