Forty-year hydropower generation reanalysis for Conterminous United States

• Published in: Scientific data Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 1040 - 13
• Main Authors: Turner, Sean W. D., Singh, Debjani, Hansen, Carly, Kao, Shih-Chieh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 19.06.2025; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/4077/909/4085; 704/242; Data Descriptor; Datasets; Humanities and Social Sciences; Hydroelectric power; Hydrology; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Water availability; United States > US
• ISSN: 2052-4463; 2052-4463
• DOI: 10.1038/s41597-025-05323-y

First published in 2022, the RectifHyd dataset provides hydrologically consistent estimates of monthly net generation for approximately 1,500 hydropower plants in the United States, addressing a gap in industrial surveys that have collected monthly generation data from only ~10% of plants post-2003. Here we present RectifHydPlus—an extended and enhanced dataset that improves on both the proxy information and temporal downscaling methodology adopted in RectifHyd. In addition to providing updated estimates of historical monthly generation for 590 plants with >10 MW nameplate capacity from 1980 through 2019, RectifHydPlus adds a hydrological control dataset that isolates the influence of historical water availability on generation. The new hydrological control dataset is suited to applications seeking to represent the capabilities of the contemporary fleet subject to historical interannual variability in climate. RectifHydPlus also includes a forty-year, daily-resolution, spill-adjusted water release time series for each dam, allowing users to aggregate generation estimates to the desired temporal resolution.