Identification

Title

Modeling the water systems of the Western US to support climate-resilient electricity system planning

Abstract

Electricity and water systems in the Western US (WUS) are closely connected, with hydropower comprising 20% of total annual WUS generation, and electricity related to water comprising about 7% of total WUS electricity use. Because of these interdependencies, the threat of climate change to WUS resources will likely have compounding electricity impacts on the Western Interconnect grid. This study describes a WUS-wide water system model with a particular emphasis on estimating climate impacts on hydropower generation and water-related electricity use, which can be linked with a grid expansion model to support climate-resilient electricity planning. The water system model combines climatically-driven physical hydrology and management of both water supply and demand allocation, and is applied to an ensemble of 15 climate scenarios out to 2050. Model results show decreasing streamflow in key basins of the WUS under most scenarios. Annual water-related electricity use increases up to 4%, and by up to 6% during the summer months, driven by growing agricultural demands met increasingly through a shift toward energy-intensive groundwater to replace declining surface water. Total annual hydropower generation changes by +5% to -20% by mid-century but declines in most scenarios, with decreases in summer generation by up to nearly -30%. Water-related electricity use increases tend to coincide with hydropower generation declines, annually and seasonally, demonstrating the importance of concurrently evaluating the climate signal on both water-for-energy and energy-for-water to inform planning for grid reliability and decarbonization goals.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7qv3rmk

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-01-27T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact