Soggy California winter set to charge up state's hydropower sector
By Laila Kearney
April 3 (Reuters) - California’s unusually stormy winter is promising good news for the state’s struggling hydropower industry.
After three years of extreme drought, winter weather has driven up the most populous U.S. state's snow levels to 235% of normal, according to the latest figures from the California Department of Water Resources. That’s likely to fill up hydro reservoirs during the spring melt, which could lead to more of the cheap renewable energy source and less dependence on fossil fuels, public agencies and utilities said.
"We expect more hydroelectricity availability this year due to the historic precipitation levels, which will translate to less of a need for natural gas," California Energy Commission spokesperson Lindsay Buckley said.
California is trying to reduce its fossil fuel use and switch to cleaner energy sources as part of a broader strategy to fight climate change.
About 40% of California's electricity was generated from natural gas and roughly 10% from hydropower in 2021, according to the latest available data from the commission.
California's conventional hydroelectric power generation fell by 55% between 2019 and 2022 due to a prolonged drought that dried up the state’s reservoirs, according to the Energy Information Administration.
While snowpack and reservoir levels are good indicators of future hydroelectricity supplies, other water uses like irrigation, wildlife and industrial operations usually are prioritized over power generation and could reduce the hydro industry’s capacity this year.
California’s grid operator, the California Independent System Operator, will detail how much water it expects to be directed to the power industry in an assessment due to be published next month.
For the broader U.S. West, the hydropower outlook is more bleak. In the West, hydroelectricity production reached a 20-year low in the 2020-2021 water year, from October to September, before ticking up the following year, the EIA said.
In Idaho, which suffered two years of drought before receiving a recent rise in precipitation, groundwater and reservoir levels remain low, said Maria Willacy, spokesperson for regulated utility Idaho Power.
Spring weather and irrigation demand will help determine whether the utility's hydropower projects will get more water. But for now, "most projections of water supply into Idaho Power's hydro system are still below normal, or at best approaching normal," Willacy said.
In the Pacific Northwest, slightly lower than normal rain and snowpack is expected to lead to average, or less, hydropower in the area, said Mike Haynes, assistant general manager at electric utility Seattle City Light.
"We are expecting a normal snow melt and accompanying runoff based on the current spring forecast," said Haynes, referencing other indicators of hydropower availability. Meanwhile, precipitation in the Columbia River Basin, a giant contributor of U.S. hydropower, is only 77% of its average and cold weather has limited inflows to the basin's reservoirs, said Aaron Marshall, reservoir regulation team lead, Northwestern Division, at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Snow melt later in the spring will brighten the water picture at that point, but other priorities for those flows are already taking precedence, including a release scheduled this week to help salmon migration, Marshall said. (Reporting by Laila Kearney; additional reporting by Scott DiSavino; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
