Water Prism Decision Support System To Be Developed Building on Past EPRI Work
Over the last decade, EPRI has developed methodologies to assess future water availability and evaluate alternative water resource management strategies that stakeholders can employ to meet the needs of the power industry, as well as the other water-related sectors in a watershed.  Building on the experience of using water budgets, water balances, complex dynamic watershed models, and simple indices, EPRI plans to build a “Water Prism,” a water management decision support system analogous to EPRI’s Prism-MERGE methodology (used to examine alternative technology pathways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the electric sector).  The Water Prism tool will provide a visual that will communicate clearly to any interested party an understanding of water availability in a watershed, including management options for all stakeholders.  This Water Prism tool will

•   focus on supporting decision making regarding power plant siting and retrofit options;
•   consider electric power sector water demands with various generation technologies, advanced cooling   technologies, nontraditional water sources, and in-plant water reuse;
•   recognize watershed and regional hydrology characteristics, water demands of competing water resource   stakeholders, and community water sharing strategies; and
•   help evaluate potential benefits of water risk reduction for existing power plants considering retrofits to increase   water use efficiency and reduce overall freshwater demand.

In parallel with its development, the Water Prism tool will be applied to a case study watershed with both a base case and a series of scenario analyses to explore alternative ways that water saving technologies employed across one or more sectors could meet sustainable water goals under projected future conditions.  For more information, contact Robert Goldstein, (650) 855-2154, rogoldst@epri.com.