Hydropower Outlook in the Pacific Northwest

Image courtesy of Peter Rood under Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License, resized to 700 x 391 pixels.

Assessing the hydropower outlook in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. is of critical importance, because this area contains more than 33% of the country’s hydropower capacity and produces more than 50% of total U.S. hydropower.  And unfortunately, while hydropower potential has increased in California thanks to its improving drought situation, it has decreased in the Pacific Northwest as a whole.

A Look Inside the EIA’s Most Recent Hydropower Outlook

According to the Short-Term Energy Outlook analysis published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in May 2023, California is expected to see a whopping 72% increase in hydropower generation this year compared to 2022, thanks to a record-breaking year of rain and snow in the west.  Specifically, it is expected that the state will generate 14% of its electricity via hydropower this year, compared to just 9% last year.

Conversely, the hydropower outlook is reversed in the Pacific Northwest.  Here, the water supply that is necessary for hydropower is severely lacking.  The 2 main factors that go into water supply forecasting are seasonal precipitation and snowpack accumulation.  The Pacific Northwest experienced a warm, dry summer in 2022, and has seen below-average levels of precipitation during the same time period, especially in Washington and northern Idaho.

The result is a predicted 14% year-over-year decline in hydropower generation across the Pacific Northwest.  So yes, talk about 2 sides of the same coin – California will generate more hydropower this year, and the Pacific Northwest will generate less this year, all because of differences in year-over-year precipitation and snowpack levels.

Overall, hydropower only accounts for a paltry 6.4% of total electricity generation in the U.S., so the forecast isn’t the end of the world.  But electric utilities in the western part of the U.S. still need to take heed of this latest hydropower outlook, because the impact, while negligible, still isn’t great.  And any drop in supply is not good when it comes to reliability.