This is an excerpt from the Fourth Quarter 2011 edition of the Wind Program R&D Newsletter.
The real work on a study to improve wind measurement and prediction methods for the wind industry is just beginning after a year-long data-gathering effort in northeastern Oregon.
Led by the Department of Energy (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Columbia Basin Wind Energy Study gathered massive amounts of wind data between November 2010 and November 2011 with a variety of wind instruments placed right next to an operating wind farm, the 300-MW Stateline Wind Energy Center. The location assures that data collected represents conditions experienced by real wind plants, though the Stateline project owners were not directly involved in the study.
Now the research team is starting to wade through the data they've collected to understand complex wind patterns and to evaluate how well atmospheric computer models predict winds. Improved atmospheric models can lead to cost savings from better forecasts for utility operators, to more efficient design and operation of wind turbines and wind plants.
The project used a handful of meteorological instruments, including Doppler sodar, ultrasonic anemometers, and a radar wind profiler. The profiler was on loan from DOE's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility. Each instrument helped characterize wind behavior at different heights, from 3 to 1,400 meters above the ground. The idea is to get a complete picture of the different ways wind moves at different heights, especially over the area swept by turbine blades.
The team has just started running simulations for the Oregon site with the widely used Weather Research & Forecasting model. Next they will compare the winds the model predicted with the actual winds their instruments measured. The data are also expected to be useful for validating wind energy atmospheric flow models under development by other researchers, both domestic and abroad.
In addition to the Oregon site, the study is also examining information collected from the flat, but gusty Southern Plains near Beaumont, Kansas. Argonne National Laboratory has been collecting wind measurements there for another, unrelated study, and PNNL will incorporate some of their data into this study. PNNL plans to have a comprehensive analysis completed by the end of 2012.
The project has benefited from collaboration with two industry partners, 3TIER of Seattle, Washington, and WindLogics of St. Paul, Minnesota. As companies that help developers identify and evaluate potential wind power sites, 3TIER and WindLogics are serving as consultants that provide input on what kind of data and evaluations would be most helpful to the industry.
"The biggest challenge with wind energy forecasting is the ability of our weather prediction models to accurately predict winds at hub height, especially in situations where the near-surface air is very stable and vertical wind shear can become large," said 3TIER Senior Scientist Mark Stoelinga. "We really need wind observations at several heights within the lowest few 100 meters of the ground, to help us develop and test better model physics schemes. This project will fill this observational data void with a rich data set of wind observations from multiple instruments at multiple heights, not just for a few days or weeks but continuously over several seasons."
In addition to its systems integration work, DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is working to accelerate the design, installation, and operation of offshore wind facilities by examining the potential impacts of those installations on the marine environment. To achieve this, PNNL is developing an environmental risk evaluation system and data storage capability to determine the priority risks from offshore wind development, and is investigating the use of monitoring technologies for avian and marine animals in offshore areas.