The Impact of Thermoelectric Power Plant Operations and Water Use Reporting Methods on Thermoelectric Power Plant Water Use - Data & Code


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Owners: Eric Sjöstedt
Type: Resource
Storage: The size of this resource is 266.7 MB
Created: Feb 25, 2025 at 2:51 a.m.
Last updated: Feb 27, 2025 at 9:09 p.m.
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Abstract

Thermoelectric power generation accounts for over 41% of total U.S. freshwater withdrawals, making understanding the determinants of power plants’ water withdrawals (WW) and consumption (WC) critical for reducing the sector's reliance on increasingly scarce water resources. However, reported data inconsistencies and incomplete analysis of potential determinants of thermoelectric water use hinder such efforts. We address these challenges by introducing a novel data filtering method and a richer assessment of water use determinants. First, we applied a power-cooling ratio as an operations-based data filter that removed operationally implausible records while retaining more original data, outperforming previous statistical filtering methods. Second, we found that different water use reporting methods (WURMs) provided statistically significantly different WW and WC values, revealing the importance of this previously unrecognized feature in reported water use records. Third, our data-driven approach showed that traditionally emphasized features — such as cooling technology and gross generation — are of primary importance but can be surpassed by other, often overlooked, features when modeling WW or WC individually. The plant configuration, cooling technology, and gross generation were the most important features of WW, whereas WURM, cooling technology, and reporting month were the most important for WC. These findings can improve thermoelectric power plant management, water use reporting accuracy, and water use modeling.

Coverage

Spatial

Coordinate System/Geographic Projection:
WGS 84 EPSG:4326
Coordinate Units:
Decimal degrees
Place/Area Name:
United States of America
North Latitude
50.7504°
East Longitude
-54.1406°
South Latitude
23.2615°
West Longitude
-129.3750°

Temporal

Start Date: 01/01/2015
End Date: 12/31/2020
Leaflet Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Content

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Data Services

The following web services are available for data contained in this resource. Geospatial Feature and Raster data are made available via Open Geospatial Consortium Web Services. The provided links can be copied and pasted into GIS software to access these data. Multidimensional NetCDF data are made available via a THREDDS Data Server using remote data access protocols such as OPeNDAP. Other data services may be made available in the future to support additional data types.

Credits

Funding Agencies

This resource was created using funding from the following sources:
Agency Name Award Title Award Number
U.S. Geological Survey Reanalyzing and predicting U.S. water use by economic history and forecast data; an experiment in short-range national hydro-economic data synthesis G20AP00002
U.S. National Science Foundation CBET- 2115169
U.S. National Science Foundation PD 19- 1638
U.S. National Science Foundation CBET- 2144169

How to Cite

Sjöstedt, E., R. Rushforth, V. Tidwell, M. Harris, R. McManamay, L. Marston (2025). The Impact of Thermoelectric Power Plant Operations and Water Use Reporting Methods on Thermoelectric Power Plant Water Use - Data & Code, HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/aa10f4621be84c01acfc82db57b5075b

This resource is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
CC-BY

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