B. Parkinson, Project Director J. Naughton, Principal Investigator

Roger Coupal, Co-Investigator Dongliang Duan, Co-Investigator Ray Fertig, Co-Investigator

Robert Godby, Co-Investigator Dimitri Mavriplis, Co-Investigator John, O’rien, Co-Investigator

Maysam Mousaviraad, Co-Investigator Suresh Muknahallipatna, Co-Investigator

John Pierre, Co-Investigator Michael Stoellinger, Co-Investigator Shawn Wulff, Co-Investigator

Matt Donnely, Co-Investigator Joshua Wold, Co-Investigator Dan Trudnowski, Co-Investigator

This renewal project addresses barriers that exist in incorporating renewable energy sources, principally wind, into the national energy infrastructure. This project adopts a comprehensive multi-scale and multidisciplinary approach that considers the complete energy conversion and delivery cycle, from continental atmospheric weather events, to wind farm power production and reliability, to power grid transmission issues, and to economic drivers and impacts on local and regional scales. The project will apply and validate models developed over the past 3 years in three principal interdependent thrusts (multi-scale coupled atmosphere/wind-plant modeling and control framework, measurement-based and model-based power system analysis, and fully integrated economic models to determine economic impacts of more diverse and variable energy generation and transmission scenarios), although some continued model development will also occur. 

This wind plant modeling capability will be applied to several example cases to both demonstrate and validate its capabilities. At the same time, measurement and model based power system analysis will be applied and further developed to improve system reliability through increased wide area situational awareness and next generation operation and planning tools, helping overcome obstacles that are exacerbated in the presence of high wind energy penetration. Complementary to the wind plant and transmission efforts, economic models will be applied to measure the impacts of improvements in wind energy and power transmission technologies. The potential impacts of this project include improved location placement of wind farms, better control and efficiency of wind farm generation, more reliable and efficient operation of power systems including integration of wind generation, and a better understanding of the economic benefits of wind farms and grid optimization.