EHA 9505 Extension: U.S. Hydropower Plant Database with Enhanced Water Source Attributes

An extension of the 2021 Existing Hydropower Assets Plant Database from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, developed to support the Department of Energy's SECURE Water Act Section 9505 Third Assessment. The dataset enhances facility spatial locations, adds water source attributes, and links to the National Hydrography Dataset. It was authored by Daniel Broman of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Use Cases

• Modeling hydropower facility water use and connectivity based on added water source attributes like Rclass and Nclass.
• Spatial analysis of power plant locations and their water sources based on updated facility coordinates and COMID links.
• Assessing regional water balance and transbasin diversions for hydropower based on the water source classification system.
• Linking hydropower infrastructure data to national hydrography datasets for integrated resource planning using the COMID identifier.

Strengths

• Builds upon a foundational 2021 database from a national laboratory (Oak Ridge National Laboratory).
• Explicitly addresses data gaps by revising and filling missing values for facility Balancing Authority.
• Adds specific new attributes for water source classification and linkage to national hydrography data.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
• Column-level documentation for the original dataset is not provided here; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Oak Ridge National Laboratory's HydroSource, extended by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the DOE Water Power Technologies Office.

Collection Method

Manual mapping and web searches for water source classification and COMID linkage.

Time Range

Based on a 2021 database; extension date unspecified.

Geography

United States (inferred from references to the National Hydrography Dataset and U.S. Department of Energy).