CONUS-wide HUC4 Watershed Hydropower Projections from the 9505 Third Assessment

Historical and climate projection monthly hydropower generation timeseries for HUC4 watersheds within the contiguous U.S. (CONUS). The data were developed as an extension to the Department of Energy Water Power Technologies Office's SECURE Water Act Section 9505 Third Assessment and include both federal and non-federal hydropower facilities. The dataset is provided in multiple formats, including a machine-readable 'tidy' CSV, to facilitate use.

Use Cases

• Projecting future hydropower generation under different climate scenarios based on the described global climate model (gcm) and downscaling method (ds) columns.
• Analyzing historical hydropower generation trends at the watershed scale based on the HUC4_group, year, and month columns.
• Comparing the output of different hydrology and hydropower models based on the model and hp columns included in the data.
• Assessing regional energy resilience by modeling hydropower supply across CONUS watersheds based on the geographic coverage described.

Strengths

• Includes both historical data and climate projection scenarios, enabling temporal analysis.
• Covers hydropower facilities across the contiguous United States at the HUC4 watershed scale.
• Data is provided in multiple formats, including a 'tidy' CSV structure designed for machine readability.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download from the provided unit descriptions.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, authored by Daniel Broman, extending the DOE Water Power Technologies Office's 9505 Third Assessment.

Collection Method

Modeled timeseries derived from hydrological and hydropower models forced by historical and climate scenario meteorological data.

Geography

Contiguous United States (CONUS), aggregated to HUC4 watershed groups.