To help track our path toward hydropower’s future, we conduct an annual survey about ongoing work in the broader hydropower community. The next Roadmap survey will launch in Fall 2025 and be linked on this page.
This survey is an extension of our effort to reimagine the Hydropower Roadmap, and the input provided is used to identify opportunities and address challenges for hydropower community engagement, research, and development.
Input from this survey may connect with ongoing efforts in the hydropower community, including the Department of Energy Water Power Technologies Office strategic plan and Uncommon Dialogue, but the survey is not directly part of those efforts.
Results from the 2023 Roadmap Survey
In the summer of 2023, more than 90 members of the hydropower community participated in a survey to share their perspectives on the activities identified in the reimagined Hydropower Vision Roadmap. Participants responded to questions about the impact, effort, and timing of each activity. They also shared their views on which sectors of the hydropower community are most critical to success in each activity area, and those that are most overlooked in current activities.
Overall Results
The impact of Roadmap activities was highly correlated with perceived effort and timing—in other words, more impactful activities take more effort and should be prioritized sooner.
When identifying high-impact Roadmap activities, survey respondents prioritized:
- structural and operational resilience adaptations
- coordination among regulatory review processes
- compensation mechanisms for hydropower services
When considering broader goals, the hydropower community recognized the impact of each Roadmap area, prioritizing critical goals related to:
- climate resilience
- regulatory process understanding and access
- workforce development
- service value recognition
- coordinated operations
- environmental performance
The perceived impact of activities, goals, and Roadmap areas reveals similarities and differences among hydropower community sectors. For example, resource agencies and NGOs tended to rank activities and goals in the Advanced Technology and Sustainable Development and Operations area as higher impact than other sectors, whereas technology developers, owner/operators, and DOE tended to rank the Optimized Regulatory Processes area as higher impact.
Overall, these results reveal opportunities for cross-sector communication and collaboration to advance the reimagined Hydropower Vision Roadmap in the priority areas.
Results for specific areas can be found on their individual pages under the Roadmap menu.