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upstart writes:

1.41GW, in fact – enough to power around one million homes:

There is a wealth of untapped hydroelectric potential in the United States – around 1.41GW of energy flowing through pipes, irrigation channels, and aqueducts.

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) reached this conclusion after what they described as a first-of-its-kind study examining the potential power generation of small and micro-scale hydroelectric generators bolted on to existing water infrastructure.

Using both existing data from water regulators and "novel remote sensing and feature detection techniques," the ORNL team said it was taking the first step in not only understanding the US's untapped conduit hydropower potential, but also to raise awareness that such a power source exists.

"For all its benefits, the biggest barrier is a general lack of awareness of conduit hydropower's potential," said Shih-Chieh Kao, ORNL's water power program manager.

[...] For the sake of generating power, ORNL said it considers any "manmade water conveyance that is operated for the distribution of water for agricultural, municipal, or industrial consumption and not primarily for the generation of electricity" as a tappable source. Most deployments would tend toward the very small scale – existing conduit hydro projects top out at less than 10MW, the team explains.

Most of the power generated by such small facilities would go toward stabilizing microgrids and offsetting energy needs for water system operators, which ORNL said is typically a significant portion of their costs. Conduit hydro systems could also be net metered, meaning unused energy could be returned to the grid for further cost offsets, ORNL said.

[...] ORNL said that there's yet another reason to consider getting conduit hydroelectric generators plugged into grids: the 1.41GW figure is probably way lower than the actual potential.

"The authors attempted to incorporate a variety of data and approaches to estimate the national conduit hydropower potentials, but the significant data gaps still represent a major hurdle to capturing the full resource potential," the researchers said.

"Given these uncounted opportunities" – which ORNL said includes self-supplied water withdrawals, incorrect coordinates on maps used for estimates, and other things unmeasurable in a broad study like this – "there could be more conduit hydropower than ... estimated in this study."

The ORNL report

See also: Portland's New Pipes Harvest Power from Drinking Water

Original Submission