Overview
The feasibility of wind energy installations at given locations are dictated in large part by the wind resource (‘power in the wind’). Variability of, and uncertainty in, that resource increase project risk and financing costs. We seek to improve the wind farm lifetime resource prediction by developing and improving more efficient numerical (computational) tools. In addition to creating region-specific detailed resource projections for the US using limited area numerical modeling, adaptive grid and machine learning tools will be evaluated to assess their applicability to refining wind energy annual electricity production estimates. Our research will ultimately reduce risk and enhance the financial competitiveness of wind energy.
Publications and presentations
Journal articles
Pryor S.C., Shepherd T.J. and Barthelmie R.J. (2018): Inter-annual variability of wind climates and wind turbine annual energy production. Wind Energy Science 3 651-665 Available here
Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J., Hahmann A., Shepherd T.J., Volker P. (2018): Downstream effects from contemporary wind turbine deployments. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1037 072010 doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/1037/7/072010 Available here.
Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J. and Shepherd T.J. (2018): The influence of real-world wind turbine deployments on regional climate. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 123 5804-5826 (doi: 10.1029/2017JD028114).
Books/other
Pryor S.C. and Hahmann A.N. (2019): Downscaling wind. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. Oxford University Press. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.730
Conference presentations
Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J., Hahmann A., Shepherd T., and Volker P. (2018): Contemporary wind turbine deployments have a minor impact on regional climate. Science of Making Torque from Wind, Milan Italy, June 2018 (oral presentation).
Shepherd T.J., Volker P., Barthelmie R.J., Hahmann A., Pryor S.C. (2018): Sensitivity of wind turbine array downstream effects to the parameterization used in WRF WRF/MPAS User’s Workshop, Boulder, CO. June 2018 (oral presentation).
Pryor S.C. and Barthelmie R.J. (2018): Measurements of wakes from a wind turbine in complex terrain. European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2018, Vienna, Austria 8–13 April 2018 (PICO presentation).
Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J. and Shepherd T. (2018): Do current and near-term future wind turbine deployments have a substantial impact on regional climate? European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2018, Vienna, Austria 8–13 April 2018 (Invited presentation).
Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J., Biondi T. and Shepherd T. (2018): Improved characterization of the magnitude and causes of spatio-temporal variability in wind resources. 98th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (31st Conference on Climate Variability and Change), Austin TX, January 2018 (poster presentation).
Shepherd T., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2018): Assessing the fidelity of the North American wind climate and impacts of wind farms using high resolution modeling. 98th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (21st Conference on Planned and Inadvertent Weather Modification), Austin TX, January 2018 (oral presentation).
Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J. and Shepherd T. (2017): High-fidelity simulations of the downstream impacts of high density wind turbine deployments. 4th Workshop on Systems Engineering for Wind Energy, Roskilde, Denmark, September 2017.
Team
Professor Sara C. Pryor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Professor Rebecca J. Barthelmie, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Tristan Sheperd, Post Doc, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Past member: Mr. Peter Cook, UG student, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Past member: Mr Thomas Biondi, UG student, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Primary collaborators
Dr. Ken Westrick, ReSurety
Mr. Ken Davies, Microsoft
Professor Peter Frazier, Cornell U
Dr. David Lifka, Cornell U
Dr. Ruby Leung, PNNL
Dr. Jake Badger, DTU
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