EIA: Western US hydropower generation rose 13% in 2022

A water year covers the 12-month period from 1 October through 30 September. The water year follows the water cycle; precipitation in the Autumn or early Winter does not affect stream and river flows until the following Spring and Summer.

The western US – Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, and Washington – produced 61% of the country’s hydroelectricity last water year (2021 – 2022).

Increases in hydropower generation in the region’s three largest hydropower-producing states – California, Oregon, and Washington – drove last year’s rise in western hydroelectric generation. Combined, these states made up 82% of western hydropower generation in the 2021 – 2022 water year.

Data from the Northwest River Forecast Center and the California Department of Water Resources show that increased precipitation in the 2021 – 22 water year fuelled the increased hydropower generation in these states. Washington’s Grand Coulee Dam, the largest hydropower plant in the country, generated 21.5 million MWh of electricity during the 2021 – 2022 water year, 19% more than it did in the previous water year.

Although hydropower generation in some western states, including Colorade, Idaho, and Montana, was relatively unchanged, well-below-normal flow rates in the Lower Colorado River reduced hydropower generation in Arizona and Nevada. The Hoover Dam, located on the Arizona-Nevada border, is the largest hydropower plant in the Lower Colorado River Basin. It has 17 main turbines; nine turbines on the Arizona side and eigjt turbines on the Nevada side. In the 2021 – 2022 water year, the Hoover Dam generated 10% less electricity than it did in the previous water year because the water level of the dam’s reservoir continued to decline during a historic drought.

From December 2022 to January 2023, a series of atmospheric rivers drenched parts of the western US, especially California, with large amounts of rain and snow. The snowfall helped establish significant snowpack at high elevations and somewhat replenished reservoirs after years of drought. Although it is too early to tell, the excessive rainfall in California may have improved the prospects for hydropower production in the state this Summer.

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