Sean Turner

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

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Nathalie Voisin

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Chris Vernon

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Mohamad Hejazi

King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center

Kristian Nelson

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Stefano Galelli

Cornell University

Jennie S. Rice

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Ana Dyreson

Michigan Technological University

Page Kyle

University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science

Ariel Miara

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Jordan Macknick

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Cooperative Institutions

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Joint Global Change Research Institute

University of Maryland, College Park

University Research Co (United States)

Office of Scientific and Technical Information

ORCID

National Technical Information Service

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Battelle

Inter-American Development Bank

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Simulation of hydropower at subcontinental to global scales: a state-of-the-art review

Environmental Research Letters (2022)

Sean Turner Nathalie Voisin

Abstract Hydroelectric power is playing a new and often expanded role in the world’s major power grids, offering low carbon generating capacity in industrializing, dam-building economies while providing reserve and flexibility to co-manage fledgling wind and solar resources in high income countries. Driven by river flows, conventional hydropower is exposed to the vagaries of weather and climate, motivating drought and climate change hydropower impact studies at large spatial scales. Here we review methods of climate-driven hydropower simulation at large spatial scales, specifically multi-basin regions to global. We identify four types of approach based on complexity of tools and richness of data applied to the problem. Since the earliest attempts to model climate-driven hydropower at continental scale almost two decades ago, the field has transitioned from one of scientific curiosity to practical application, with studies increasingly motivated by the need to inform power grid expansion planning and operation. As the hydrological and water management models used in large-scale hydropower studies become more sophisticated, new opportunities will emerge to study the impacts of changing hydropower on power system reliability and performance at large power grid scale. To grasp these opportunities, the water resources community must continue to enhance data and models for representing river flows and anthropogenic water use and management at subcontinental to global scales.

Hydroelectricity

10.1088/1748-9326/ac4e38

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Influence of El Niño Southern Oscillation on global hydropower production

EGUGA (2016)

Jia Yi Ng Sean Turner Stefano Galelli

El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) strongly influences the global climate system, affecting hydrology in many of the world's river basins. This raises the prospect of ENSO-driven variability in global and regional hydroelectric power generation. Here we study these effects by generating time series of power production for 1593 hydropower dams, which collectively represent more than half of the world's existing installed hydropower capacity. The time series are generated by forcing a detailed dam model with monthly-resolution, 20th century inflows—the model includes plant specifications, storage dynamics and realistic operating schemes, and runs irrespectively of the dam construction year. More than one third of simulated dams exhibit statistically significant annual energy production anomalies in at least one of the two ENSO phases of El Nino and La Nina. For most dams, the variability of relative anomalies in power production tends to be less than that of the forcing inflows—a consequence of dam design specifications, namely maximum turbine release rate and reservoir storage, which allows inflows to accumulate for power generation in subsequent dry years. Production is affected most prominently in Northwest United States, South America, Central America, the Iberian Peninsula, Southeast Asia and Southeast Australia. When aggregated globally, positive and negative energy production anomalies effectively cancel each other out, resulting in a weak and statistically insignificant net global anomaly for both ENSO phases.

Hydroelectricity

Forcing (mathematics)

Anomaly (physics)

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RectifHyd Version 2.0: Historical and counterfactual-climatological hydropower monthly generation totals for CONUS plants, 1980 – 2019

OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (2024)

Sean Turner Debjani Singh Carly Hanson Shih-Chieh Kao

Conus

10.21951/rectifhydv2/2440153

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Drought Impacts on Hydroelectric Power Generation in the Western United States

Sean Turner Nathalie Voisin Kristian Nelson Vincent Tidwell

The Western United States experiences large fluctuations in rain and snowfall from year to year, affecting river flows and reservoir levels throughout the region. This interannual variability in water resources leaves a strong signature on total annual energy generated by the region's fleet of hydroelectric dams. In a wet year, like 2011, hydroelectric power can meet 30 percent of annual western electricity demand. That contribution can drop below 20 percent during severe drought years. Characterizing the contribution of hydroelectric power to the western generation portfolio during drought is crucial to understanding the resilience of the hydropower sector to climate-related risk, both now and in the future. This report analyzes the impacts of historical western droughts on hydroelectric power production by combining two decades' worth of annual generation—recorded at more than 600 hydroelectric power plants—with historical climate data developed for distinct hydropower subregions of the West. The most extreme impacts of drought on hydroelectric power are found at individual dams where reservoir levels are so low that released water and thus generation becomes severely restricted. These isolated cases often receive widespread media attention, leading to a common misconception that hydroelectric power is an unreliable technology whose role will diminish over time as the western climate produces longer and more severe droughts. Yet, when aggregated to the scale of the West, the observational records of hydropower generation reveal a different story. Even during the most severe droughts experienced since the turn of the century, the western hydropower fleet sustained more than 80% of its typical annual generation. Observational data indicate that drought in 2021 led to the worst year for hydropower generation in the West since 2001, with total generation approximately 16 percent below the 21st century two-decade average. The year 2021 was particularly severe in California (second worst hydro year of last two decades, ~48 percent below average) and Oregon (worst hydro year of last two decades), while generation in Washington and Idaho was affected to a lesser degree (~12 percent below average for combined region). The year 2001 remains the year of lowest western hydropower generation of the twenty-first century so far, owing to extreme drought in the Pacific Northwest, where about two-thirds of western hydropower capacity is located. The primary reason for this relative stability is the diversity of weather across the West; drought rarely impairs hydroelectric power across all river basins at the same time.

Hydroelectricity

10.2172/1887470

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Advancing the Representation of Human Actions in Large-Scale Hydrological Models: Challenges and Future Research Directions

Authorea (Authorea) (2025)

Stefano Galelli Sean Turner Yadu Pokhrel Jia Yi Ng Andrea Castelletti

not-yet-known not-yet-known not-yet-known unknown Characterizing the impact of human actions on terrestrial water fluxes and storages at multi-basin, continental, and global scales has long been on the agenda of scientists engaged in climate science, hydrology, and water resources systems analysis. This need has resulted in a variety of modeling efforts focused on the representation of water infrastructure operations. Yet, the inclusion of human-water interactions in large-scale hydrological models is still relatively crude, fragmented across models, and often achieved at coarse resolutions (~10-100 km) that cannot accurately capture local water management decisions. In this commentary, we argue that the concomitance of four drivers and innovations is poised to change the status quo: "hyper-resolution"' hydrological models (~0.1-1 km), multi-sector modeling, satellite missions able to provide human behavioral observations, and machine learning are creating a fertile environment for human-water research to flourish. We then outline four challenges that chart future research in hydrological modeling: (1) creating hyper-resolution global datasets of water management practices, (2) improving the characterization of anthropogenic interventions on water quantity, stream temperature, and sediment transport, (3) improving model calibration and diagnostic evaluation, and (4) reducing the computational requirements associated with the successful exploration of these challenges. Overcoming these challenges will require addressing modeling, computational, and data development needs that cut across the hydrology community, thereby requiring a major communal effort.

Human systems engineering

Hydrological modelling

Temporal scales

Representation

Simulation Modeling

10.22541/essoar.173884587.72105902/v1

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IMMM-SFA/Turner_et_al_2020_WRR: CRB reservoir simulations

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2020)

Sean Turner Kenji Doering Nathalie Voisin

Simulation results for manuscript 2020WR027902, "Data-driven reservoir simulation in a large scale hydrological and water resource model", submitted to Water Resources Research.

10.5281/zenodo.3983584

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Southern slopes information portal report: climate change adaptation information for natural resource planning and implementation

Phillip Wallis Andrew Harwood PB Leith L. Hamilton Karyn Bosomworth

Climate Change Adaptation

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Citations (3)

The Case for Sustainable Engineering in Undergraduate Engineering Education

Sean Turner

Private sector and government programs represent investments of billions of dollars in the renewable energy field, which is experiencing unprecedented demand.There are many reasons for this demand including that it is a constant growing field due to the need for alternative generation means to address peak loads and to meet carbon reduction goals, among others.Renewable energy technologies are important on a global basis due to pressures on conventional fossil-fuel energy resources used to power the majority of today's societal needs.This dramatic shift means that there is a new need for Sustainability Engineers who are proficient in the broad portfolio of technologies and analytic techniques to deal with renewable and alternative energy.In order to meet increasing demand, Sustainability Engineering students will need to be trained to design new systems as well as plan for the financial aspects of these systems.In most programs, undergraduate students do not have the preparation needed to become effective in the Sustainable Engineering field.For example, they lack coursework in topics such as energy management, generation design, techniques of financial modeling, and exposure to the broader concepts of alternative energy.One of the traditional steps is to create new programs to meet a specific need.Alternatively, concentrations in a new subject can be addressed by formulating a core body of knowledge.An even faster way to begin focusing content on a new area is to adapt existing coursework that is intrinsically flexible; for example, using capstone design and special topic electives.To meet the need for developing Sustainability Engineers, Rowan University is using the Engineering Clinic program to bring together both undergraduate and graduate students to work on projects directly related to Sustainability Engineering.The Center for Sustainable Design located at the South Jersey Technology Park was created to focus on a broad collection of sustainable engineering projects primarily in the photovoltaic and wind energy areas.Typically, projects are one to two years in duration, so students are likely to join a project that is already underway.Inside of the solar category, a task that has been frequently recurring is the performance of the photovoltaic systems as well as taking part in solar assessments for different site areas for companies.While inside of the wind category, students are taking data from several different wind assessment locations in New Jersey and providing possible turbine generation results.The mast anemometer was just another wind assessment location that we predicted the possible amount of power the different turbines would generate.

10.18260/1-2-1153-50051

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Influence of Groundwater Extraction Costs and Resource Depletion Limits on Simulated Global Nonrenewable Water Withdrawals Over the Twenty‐First Century

Earth s Future (2019)

Sean Turner Mohamad Hejazi Catherine Yonkofski Son H. Kim Page Kyle

Abstract Future rates of global groundwater depletion will depend on the economic and environmental viability of extracting water from increasingly stressed aquifers. Here we analyze global groundwater depletion by considering these factors explicitly. Global gridded groundwater availability and extraction cost data are aggregated to produce nonrenewable resource supply curves for 235 major river basins and geopolitical regions. These resources are then exposed to dynamically generated demands for water in a fully coupled, multisectoral, global simulation. As groundwater head levels drop, imposing greater capital and operating costs to bring water to the surface, modeled water use sectors are able to deploy a range of supply‐ and demand‐driven adaptive responses. Results demonstrate large sensitivity in global groundwater depletion rates to adjustments in resource exploitability. Extraction costs moderate demands for nonrenewable water substantially, resulting in the onset of a decline in global groundwater depletion rates within the twenty‐first century. New groundwater depletion hot spots may emerge as crop producers abandon overexploited basins and expand croplands in regions with cheaper, more plentiful water resources.

Non-renewable resource

10.1029/2018ef001105

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Citations (128)

ERCOT Reservoir Watershed Delineations and Inflow Scenarios

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2020)

Kristian Nelson Sean Turner Nathalie Voisin Shih‐Chieh Kao

This dataset includes daily runoff totals for historical (reanalysis) and future (GCM simulations) climate. The scenarios are generated for upstream watersheds of 44 reservoirs that supply water for thermal plant cooling throughout the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) power grid region. These data are derived from 1/24 degree gridded CONUS-scale hydrological simulations. Runoff projections are masked to delineated watershed areas (included as shape files) and summed across grid cells within the target watershed. These data may be aggregated to monthly scale to produce unregulated inflow scenarios for ERCOT reservoirs. Reservoir attributes and storage records are included in a supplementary excel spreadsheet. Please see README.txt for further details.

Inflow

10.5281/zenodo.4273146

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