Institution: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Oladosu G.A. and Ma Y. (2026). Baseline Cost Model for Hydropower: Documentation (2025). ORNL/TM-2025/3733, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN. 10.2172/3014292

The Baseline Cost Model for Hydropower (BCMH) was developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (O’Connor, et al., 2015) using data for planned or active projects to support national-scale evaluation of hydropower costs. This report documents a major update of the BCMH, including new data and specifications. The report presents the background, data sources, summaries of the data sample, and a series of parametric models for estimating the initial capital cost (ICC) and the cost of operation and maintenance (O&M) of US hydropower projects. For the ICC, this report presents sub-models for evaluating the capital cost of four categories of hydropower projects ( non-powered dams (NPD), new stream-reach development (NSD), canal/conduits (Canal/Conduit), and pumped storage hydropower (PSH) ), and the potential cost of capacity expansion (CXP) and generator rewind (GRW) modifications to existing hydropower projects. While more sophisticated and bottom-up cost estimation techniques are necessary for specific investment decisions, the aggregate parametric models described in this report are useful for a rapid evaluation of potential US hydropower projects.

Turner, S.W.D., Singh, D., Hansen, C. et al. Forty-year hydropower generation reanalysis for Conterminous United States. Sci Data 12, 1040 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-05323-y