HomeMy WebLinkAboutUS Hydro Resource Assessment for Alaska 11-1997DOE/ID-10430(AK)
U.S. Hydropower Resource Assessment
for
Alaska
Prepared by:
Alison M. Conner
James E. Francfort
Project Manager:
Ben N. Rinehart
Published November 1997
Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory
Renewable Energy Products Department
Lockheed Martin Idaho Technologies Company
Idaho Falls, Idaho 83415
Prepared for the
U.S. Department of Energy
Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Under DOE Idaho Operations Office
Contract DE-AC07-94ID13223
U.S. Hydropower Resource Assessment
for
Alaska
INTRODUCTION
In June 1989, the U.S. Department of En-
ergy initiated the development of a National
Energy Strategy to identify the energy resources
available to support the expanding demand for
energy in the United States. Public hearings
conducted as part of the strategy development
process indicated that undeveloped hydropower
resources were not well defined. As a result, the
Department of Energy established an inter-
agency Hydropower Resource Assessment
Team to ascertain the undeveloped hydropower
potential. In connection with these efforts by the
Department of Energy, the Idaho National
Engineering Laboratory designed the Hydro-
power Evaluation Software (HES), which has
been used to perform a resource assessment of
the undeveloped conventional hydropower
potential in over 30 states. This report presents
the results of the hydropower resource assess-
ment for the State of Alaska. Undeveloped
pumped storage hydropower potential is not
included.
The HES was developed as a tool to meas-
ure undeveloped hydropower potential region-
ally or by state. The software is not intended to
provide precise development factors for individ-
ual sites, but to provide regional or state totals.
Because the software was developed as a
generic measurement tool encompassing
national issues, regional and state totals must be
considered judiciously; various local issues may
skew undeveloped hydropower potential totals.
The information for the resource assessment
was compiled from the Federal Energy Regula-
tory Commission's Hydroelectric Power Re-
sources Assessment database and several other
sources. Refer to DOE/ID-10338, the User's
Manual (Francfort, Matthews, Rinehart 1991)
for the specifics of the software and to
DOE/ID-10430.1, the Status Report (Conner,
Francfort, Rinehart 1996) for an overview of all
resource assessment activities to date.
Model Development
Hydropower Evaluation Software, both a
probability -factor computer model and a data-
base, is a menu -driven program that is intended
to be user-friendly. Computer screens and
report -generation capabilities were developed to
meet the needs of users nationwide. The
software uses environmental attribute data to
generate an overall project environmental
suitability factor (PESF) between 0.1 and 0.9,
where 0.9 indicates the highest likelihood of
development and 0.1 indicates the lowest
likelihood of development. The suitability
factors depend on the unique environmental
attributes of each potential site. They reflect the
considerations that (a) environmental concerns
can make a potential site unacceptable, prohib-
iting its development (for a suitability factor of
0.1), or (b) if there are no environmental
concerns, there is no negative effect on the
likelihood of site development (for a suitability
factor of 0.9). A combination of attributes can
result in a lower suitability factor because
multiple environmental considerations would
reduce the likelihood that a site may be devel-
oped to its physical potential.
Model Goal
The goal of the HES is to assemble an
accurate resource database of all sites with
undeveloped hydropower potential in the United
States for use as a planning tool to determine the
viable national hydropower potential. Unde-
veloped hydropower potential is not limited to
the development of new sites; it also includes
the development of additional hydropower -
generating capacity at sites that currently have
hydropower, but are not developed to their full
potential. This undeveloped hydropower poten-
tial is a source of nonpolluting, renewable ener-
gy available to meet the growing power needs of
the United States. The HES should help make
this goal obtainable and ensure a set of uniform
criteria for national assessment.
Dam Status
The effects of environmental attributes
vary by dam status. The dam status classifica-
tions used are as follows:
W = Developed hydropower site
with current power generation,
but the total hydropower po-
tential has not been fully de-
veloped. Only the undeveloped
hydropower potential is dis-
cussed in this report.
W/O = Developed site without current
power generation. The site has
some type of developed im-
poundment or diversion struc-
ture, but no developed hydro-
power generating capability.
U = Undeveloped site. The site
does not have power genera-
tion capability nor a developed
impoundment or diversion
structure.
ASSESSMENT RESULTS
Summary Results
A total of 119 sites (Table 1) have been
identified and assessed for their undeveloped
hydropower potential. The HES results for
individual site capacities range from 6 kilowatts
(kW) to 510 megawatts (MW). The majority
(79%) of the sites in Alaska are less than 10
MW (Figure 1).
The nonmodeled undeveloped hydropower
potential total for Alaska was identified as 4,042
MW. The HES results lowers this estimate
about 47% to 2,157 MW. The greatest reduction
in undeveloped hydropower potential, by MW,
occurs at sites with some type of developed
impoundment or diversion structure, but no
current power generation capability (W/O
category). These sites have a HES-modeled
undeveloped hydropower potential of 1,610
MW, a 1,256-MW reduction in the estimated
undeveloped hydropower potential (Figure 2).
Figure 3 correlates the number of sites that have
undeveloped hydropower potential with the total
megawatts of HES-modeled undeveloped
hydropower potential. The developed sites
without power have the largest average unde-
veloped hydropower potential of about 27 MW
per site (Figure 3).
The 119 identified sites are located within
10 major river basins. The number of sites per
major river basin ranges from 2 in the Copper
River Basin to 37 in the Juneau Group River
Basin (Figure 4). Fifty-three percent of the
undeveloped hydropower potential in the State
of Alaska is contained within the Susitna River
Basin (Figure 5).
Table 1. Undeveloped hydropower potential summary for Alaska. The table contains the nonmodeled
undeveloped nameplate potential and the HES-modeled undeveloped potential totals.
Number of projects Nameplate potential HES-modeled potential
(MW) (MW)
With Power 3
64.7
58.0
W/O Power 60
2,866.2
1,609.9
Undeveloped 56
1,111.4
489.5
State Total 119
4,042.3
2,157.4