Publications

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.

Megan M. Johnson and Rocio Uría-Martínez. 2025. U.S. Hydropower Market Report Data and Metadata (2025 Update). HydroSource. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA.  10.21951/HMR_2025/2583698

Matson, P. G., Bozeman, B. B., DeRolph, C. R., Oladosu, G. A., Singh, D., Richie, D., … & Fischer, M. (2025). A census of fish passage facilities at US hydropower developments across the conterminous United States. Journal of Environmental Management, 391, 126623.

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

H. -J. Yoon, T. Ruggles, H. Zhao and D. Singh, “A Decision Support System to Compile Environmental Mitigations from Hydropower Licensing Documents,” 2024 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData), Washington, DC, USA, 2024, pp. 4265-4268, doi: 10.1109/BigData62323.2024.10825065.

Johnson, M.M., and Uría-Martínez, R., (2024). US Hydropower Market Report (2024 Edition). Washington, DC: Water Power Technologies Office, U.S. Department of Energy. DOE/EE- 2771.

Hansen, C., Gallego Calderon, J., Bastidas Pacheco, C., Mendadhala, R., Davis, C., and Russell, G. (2024) US Nonpowered Dam Resource Assessment: Technical Potential Update. ORNL/TM-2024/3359.

Christopher J. O’Reilley and Hope J. Corsair. 2024. Small Hydropower Interconnection Best Practices Guidelines and Templates. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN.

Hope J. Corsair and Christopher J. O’Reilley. 2023. Small Hydropower Interconnection: Decision Support Tool User Guide. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN.