Uniform criteria for US hydropower resource assessment

The Department of Energy's (DOE) National Energy Strategy (NES) and the DOE Interagency Hydropower Resource Assessment team requires a representative estimate of the hydropower development potential in this country. The Hydropower Evaluation Software (HES) is a computer model that was developed by the Idaho national Engineering Laboratory (INEL) for this purpose. HES measures the potential hydropower resources available in the United States, using a national uniform criteria for measurement. HES was developed and tested employing hydropower information and data provided by the Southwestern Power Administration (SWPA). HES is a dBASE 3 PLUS dBASE 4 menu driven software application. HES provides the personal computer user with the ability to assign environmental attributes to potential hydropower projects and to calculate a development suitability factor for each project based on the environmental attributes. HES also provides a report capability based on the suitability factors. This document details HES's functions, capabilities and the assumptions exercised.