A Collaborative Environment: Hydropower Modeling and Data Management at WAPA

Anna Clark, B.S. Engineering Physics (Renewable Energy) 2023  
M.S. Management Science & Engineering (Energy & Environment) 2024 
Graduate Fellow, Western Area Power Administration (WAPA)

This summer, I am working at the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) as a graduate fellow. As one of four power marketing administrations within the Department of Energy, WAPA sells wholesale electricity from multi-use hydropower projects to preference customers like rural electric cooperatives, public utility districts, and municipally-owned utilities. Overseeing a 15-state region, over 17,000 miles of transmission lines, and a total installed generation capacity of 10,504 MW of hydropower, WAPA, with its mission to provide safe, reliable, and cost-based hydropower and transmission capacity, has a wide-reaching impact.

I have been lucky this summer to be able to participate in two projects with very different scopes and stakeholders.

My first project is working on an analysis on the costs to customers of proposed change in operations at hydropower plants in the Colorado River Storage Project area. As part of conservation efforts to protect a species of endangered fish, the humpback chub, the Bureau of Reclamation has proposed an environmental assessment that would result in a decreased flow of water through dam turbines, thus decreasing the amount of hydropower generated in the CRSP region. Working with scientists at NREL and ANL in addition to a team of WAPA engineers, I am investigating what costs this change in generation could cause WAPA customers, due to building alternative generation capacity and transmission capacity. We are also hoping to quantify whether this change in operations would have any impact on the carbon intensity of energy generated and sold to customers in the area. A big portion of the project has also comprised of validating the model results to ensure they are consistent with contracts and relationships between independent power producers in the network, which is difficult to encode in the model.

It's been a great experience seeing how power systems are impacted by and in turn impact other facets of environmentalism, such as conservation efforts! Particularly because the research I conduct at school with the Natural Capital Project relates to planning out hydropower generation to minimize its environmental impacts, it's been a great learning experience to see examples of hydropower's environmental impacts on the ground and learn how they are mitigated in different ways, and how customer needs are taken into account throughout the mitigation process. The work I've done this summer at WAPA on modeling hydropower networks has made me more aware of human-centric metrics to consider as I investigate capacity expansion in hydropower energy systems in my research.

My second project is more internally-facing: I'm working with WAPA's Asset Management team to evaluate and standardize some of WAPA's management procedures and systems for tracking WAPA's critical infrastructure. I've learned a lot about WAPA's long-term vision, and how to effectively manage such a large network of infrastructure ranging such a wide expanse of territory. As updates to the grid become more frequent to accommodate smart operations and variable generation sources and lead times for certain components stretch out, it will only become more imperative to actively manage and track the status of all components of our energy systems infrastructure. I'm glad to be a part of this effort!

As I've progressed through my fellowship this summer, both projects have surprised me in how interconnected they are to other projects or other teams' efforts throughout the enterprise. As a remote fellow, I was expecting to work on one project which was more or less self-contained, but I've been very pleasantly surprised how collaborative and interactive my experience has been. Sometimes I am invited to travel to in-person meetings or working sessions, which has been a great learning experience!

Since I'm working remotely, my days vary depending on what my objectives are. Most days start off with a few hours on independent work, where I read through documentation on calculating different metrics, power purchase agreements with independent power producers, strategic plans or draft environmental assessments. After accumulating some knowledge, I'll have a few check in meetings with mentors on either both or one of my projects, where I'll share insights and get feedback on the direction in which I'm progressing. I look forward to attending some in-person workshops and facility tours later in the summer!