Put Power Generators at More Stations and Grow Our Hydropower

  I pull out a map filled with dots marking where dams are in the United States. They saturate the map. I google to determine how many dams there are -- 84,000, says one website, 90,580 says another, and 2.5 million says a third.

  I look up a list of hydropower stations in America. I scroll down the page, counting them, and come up with less than 70. Hydopower might be one of our least utilized resources, then, regardless how you count it. How many of these dams could be converted into hydropower stations, I do not know. But, it seems plenty.  

  So, I continue, and find a report titled, An Assessment of Energy Potential at Non-Powered Dams in the United States. "In contrast to the roughly 2,500 dams that provide 78 gigawatts (GW) of conventional and 22 GW of pumped-storage hydropower," the report reads, "the United States has more than 80,000 non-powered dams (NPDs) -- dams that do not produce electricity."

   Now, I'm really getting excited. With 80,000 dams not being utilized to generate power, just how much potential is going wasted?

  Then, comes the downer. "Adding power to U.S. NPDs has the potential to add 12 GW (12,000 megawatts or MW) of new renewable capacity -- a potential equivalent to increasing the size of the existing conventional hydropower by 15%."

   The potential is only for 15%? That is not near as much as I had hoped. Still, looking at the total number of dams, I question if there is not a greater harvest of energy to be had. I wonder if we aren't pulling up way short in suggesting only a 15 percent increase.