Waterways across the United States with no dams or hydropower facilities could add more than 65 gigawatts of hydropower to the grid, or about 128 percent of the nation’s hydropower net annual generation, according to an Oak Ridge National Laboratory report. The study took advantage of advanced geospatial datasets to analyze the potential for hydropower development in more than 3 million segments of streams -- or “stream-reaches.” With 17 gigawatts of untapped hydropower, the Pacific Northwest has the highest potential, followed by the Missouri River Basin with 11 gigawatts, according to the report, the most detailed evaluation of U.S. hydropower potential at undeveloped stream-reaches to date. Hydropower provides the U.S. with about 6 percent of its electricity. The report, prepared for the Department of Energy, is available at http://nhaap.ornl.gov/nsd.
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