This is the gateway portal for the Sandia Data Review Mapping Application. The research team at Sandia National Laboratory has been conducting extensive research to evaluate where and what types of water may be available for development and/or transfer, especially for electric power generation, and to characterize future demand for other sectors as well. The goals of the study are to minimize costs and stress over water, and maximize reliability and transmission capacity through the west. The data are intended for use by the electric power long-range transmission planning teams at the Western Electric Coordinating Council (WECC) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), and other applications.
During the years 2011 and 2012, Sandia engaged with state agencies to access their water estimates and to utilize their in-house expertise. In this manner, Sandia was able to generate several metrics on water availability for states that are coincident with the service area for the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), at the 8-digit HUC scale across the West. After the data were gathered, a cross-disciplinary team of experts from western state water agencies participated in metric development and refinement. These metrics will be used by WECC and ERCOT for long-range, large-scale site screening and to further understand how water could potentially constrain energy development in the West. Now that the metrics are fully assembled, the state agencies need to review them in their entirety and as a map, to provide a quality assurance and quality control measure on the data.
This gateway accesses the latest QA/QC’d version of the data assembled by the Sandia team, and facilitates an additional review by the states. Here are the steps proposed for the review procedure:
- Login to the online portal using the login credentials provided. There are a total of five water availability metrics and four cost-of-development estimates, as well as four derivative products that need review. Scroll through the map gallery on the main menu page and click on the metric that you want to review.
- Zoom to the state of interest and click on the basins sequentially to see the basin and sub-basin name, the metric or cost estimate and a link to look at methodology information. The metric and cost layers can be turned on and off using the “Layers” tab at the top of the map. (*NOTE: To minimize confusion, try to have only one layer on at a time.)
- Review the estimate and click on the methodology link if necessary.
- If the metric or cost need to be changed, fill out the “Change Request” form. Enter your initials, so Sandia can reach you if they have questions. Some fields are pre-filled with the HUC number and Lat/Long – just ignore these. When the form is filled out, hit enter or click “Submit” and this information will be transmitted immediately to the Sandia review team. A few minutes after your request is made, it will be added to the map as a pin. To see the new pins, refresh your map. To get descriptive information about the change request, zoom in and click on the pin. This feature will prevent the same request from being submitted twice and also contains explanatory information if another person takes over the review.
- Repeat steps 2 through 4 for all HUC-8 basins that need refinement. At the end of the review, any basins that do not have a “Change Request” will keep their original values.
The WSWC hopes that this additional review step will assist with metric and water availability estimate refinement, increase confidence in the data, and serve as a basis for further water availability studies and policy reviews.
The current status of the review project: