CONUS Hydropower Head and Storage

This dataset provides manually-collected static head and storage (where applicable) data for 269 hydropower facilities in the contiguous U.S. (CONUS). These data were obtained primarily from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licenses through the FERC eLibrary. Sources of head and storage data are noted in the dataset along with the type of head value. Several identifiers are included to link these data to other datasets and include the Energy Information Administration (EIA) plant ID (EIA_PID), Oak Ridge National Laboratory HydroSource Existing Hydropower Assets plant ID (EHA_PID), National Inventory of Dams (NID) dam ID (NID_ID), and FERC docket number (FC_Dock). 

The development of this dataset focused on improving estimates of head and storage for the purposes of simulating hydropower production using wmpy_power, a process-based hydropower model. While attempts were made to ensure consistency in the type of head included - gross head or maximum gross head - this was not possible in all cases, and the type of head included is noted. These discrepancies were acceptable for the original purpose of this dataset, and users should thoroughly review the data prior to using it for other purposes. 

The selection of facilities included in this dataset was done in an ad-hoc manner, identifying facilities where initial hydropower production simulations performed poorly, or facility characteristics indicated that head and storage values obtained from national-scale datasets may be inaccurate. Future updates to this dataset may include expanding the set of facilities included, and refining the data contained within.

Field descriptions for the fields included in the dataset are provided below:

Field
Type
Description

State
Character
Two-character state abbreviation

EHA_PID
Character
ORNL Hydrosource Existing Hydropower Assets plant ID

EIA_PID
Integer
US Energy Information Administration plant ID

NID_ID
Character
National Inventory of Dams dam ID

PtName
Character
Hydropower facility name

FC_Dock
Character
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission docket number

Total_MW
Float
Hydropower facility nameplate capacity

Head_Ft
Float
Hydropower facility head in feet

Head_M
Float
Hydropower facility head in meters

Head_Type
Character
Type of head

Head_Source
Character
Source of head data

Storage_AF
Float
Hydropower facility storage in acre-feet

Storage_M3
Float
Hydropower facility storage in cubic meters

Storage_Source
Character
Source of storage data