Saturday, April 21, 2012

Powering up America’s Waterways


Energy Department Report Finds Major Potential to Increase Clean Hydroelectric Power

A new report released by the Energy Department analyzes the potential to generate clean hydroelectric energy at existing dams across the United States. Harnessing the tremendous power of the nation’s waterways could help increase the supply of clean energy for American families and businesses.
The report, titled An Assessment of Energy Potential at Non-Powered Dams in the United States, analyzes more than 54,000 specific sites that could be developed to generate power. The results indicate that, if fully developed, the nation’s non-powered dams could provide enough energy to power over four million households.
Thousands of dams across the country are not currently equipped to produce power. This report finds that if fully developed, these existing dams could provide an electrical generating capacity of more than 12 gigawatts (GW). This amounts to increasing existing U.S. conventional hydropower capacity by roughly 15%.


Link here to read this report

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Pandy, the 12 GW they refer to in the report, is that 12 real GW or is that 12 faux, wind GW? Nice thing about dam power, is it is 24/7. Of course, Marion Trieste would be shouting, "What about droughts!" Aside from Marion's bias towards wind, developing clean, 24/7 hydro power makes sense. Only a dam fool would deny it.