42 U.S.C. § 17213: Hydropower research, development, and demonstration

non-powered dams, including aging and potentially hazardous dams; pumped storage; constructed waterways; new stream-reach development; modular and small dams; increased operational flexibility; and enhancement of relevant existing facilities; extend the operational lifetime of hydropower systems and their physical structures, while improving environmental impact, including potential cumulative environmental impacts; assist in device and system design, installation, operation, and maintenance; and reduce costs, limit outages, and increase unit and plant efficiencies, including by examining the impact of changing water and electricity demand on hydropower generation, flexibility, and provision of grid services; study, in conjunction with other relevant Federal agencies as appropriate, methods to improve the hydropower licensing process, including by compiling current and accepted best practices, public comments, and methodologies to assess the full range of potential environmental and economic impacts; pumped storage systems and other renewable energy systems; small hydro facilities and other energy storage systems; other hybrid energy systems; small hydro facilities and critical infrastructure, including water infrastructure; and hydro facilities and responsive load technologies, which may include smart buildings and city systems; improve the reliability of hydropower technologies, including during extreme weather events; fisheries; aquatic life and resources; navigation of waterways; and upstream and downstream environmental conditions, including sediment movement, water quality, and flow volumes; diversifying plant configuration options; improving pump-back efficiencies; investigating multi-phase systems; developing, testing, and monitoring advanced generators with faster cycling times, variable speeds, and improved efficiencies; developing, testing, and monitoring advanced turbines capable of improving environmental impact, including potential cumulative environmental impacts, including small turbine designs; developing standardized powertrain components; developing components with advanced materials and manufacturing processes, including additive manufacturing; and developing analytical tools that enable hydropower to provide grid services that, amongst other services, improve grid integration of other energy sources; systems with adjustable speed and other new pumping and generating equipment designs; modular systems; alternative closed-loop systems, including mines and quarries; and other innovative equipment and materials as determined by the Secretary; reduce civil works costs and construction times for hydropower and pumped storage systems, including comprehensive data and systems analysis of hydropower and pumped storage construction technologies and processes in order to identify areas for whole-system efficiency gains; improving methods for operational forecasting of renewable energy systems to identify opportunities for hydropower applications in pumped storage and hybrid energy systems, including forecasting of seasonal and annual energy storage; considering aggregating small distributed hydropower assets; and identifying barriers to grid scale implementation of hydropower and pumped storage technologies; improve computational fluid dynamic modeling methods; improve flow measurement methods, including maintenance of continuous flow measurement equipment; identify best methods for compiling data on all hydropower resources and assets, including identifying potential for increased capacity; and identify mechanisms to test and validate performance of hydropower and pumped storage technologies.