Drought Cuts California's Hydropower Generating Capacity In Half Jan-June 2014

[hatrack]

EDIT

Normally, 20 percent of California’s power comes from hydroelectric sources. But not anymore.

For the first six months of 2014, only 10 percent of the state’s electricity was hydropower, roughly between 900,000 megawatt hours in January and 2.3 million megawatt hours in June, EIA data show. The average hydropower generation for January is about 2 million megawatt hours, and nearly 4 million megawatt hours in June.

EDIT

Early this year, the California Energy Commission estimated that the state’s major utilities together would face a 63 percent shortfall in hydropower generation this year, according to a commission Hydropower Working Group briefing on the matter. As hydropower production drops, natural gas power generation is taking up the slack, hitting a 10-year high in California in January, just as hydropower generation hit a 10-year low. Natural gas power generation for the first half of this year was 16 percent above the January-June average for the previous decade, EIA data show.

Wind power generation surpassed hydropower generation for the first time in California in February and March, contributing to a more than 17 percent spike in solar and wind power generation in California and making up roughly 30 percent of the state’s total power supply.

EDIT

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/drought-dries-up-california-hydropower-18141