Cameron Bracken , Youngjun Son, Daniel Broman, Nathalie Voisin

Hydropower is a critical electricity resource in the United States which, in addition to renewable and carbon-free electricity generation, provides valuable ancillary grid services, and supports the integration of wind and solar resources. Despite its value to an increasingly decarbonized grid, there are very few comprehensive datasets available from which to study both historical and future impacts of climate change, variable renewable energy droughts, and renewable integration. In this paper, we present a hydropower generation dataset covering over 1,400 hydroelectric plants in the contiguous U.S. The dataset contains monthly and weekly hydropower generation estimates for both historical (1982-2019) and future (2020-2099) periods which includes 4 future climate scenarios. In addition, this dataset provides weekly and monthly constraints such as minimum and maximum power which are particularly useful in power system models which are used to study grid reliability, transmission planning and capacity expansion.