DRI Faculty:    Darko Koracin | Richard Reinhardt | Greg McCurdy | Travis McCord

Collaborators: None

Objectives/Methods: The overall objective of this project was to improve assessment of wind power density in Nevada and in the Southwest and promote deployment of low-wind-speed turbines and other emerging wind technologies.  The specific objective for this project was to demonstrate that it is possible to evaluate standard wind resource maps using meteorological towers and models.  This was accomplished by installing four instrumented 50m towers in western Nevada and using two periods of one-year-long, high-resolution three-dimensional, time-dependent regional and mesoscale (MM5), as well as microscale (adaptive grid) models.

Results/Conclusions: The towers were in operation from October 2003 until December 2007. Data from an acoustic sounder co-located with the tower compared well with the tower data for lower heights, but the detection range of the sounder was too low (usually less than 100m).   The study results showed that the standard maps need to be taken as a first guess while expecting significant year to year variations.   The standard maps show general overestimation compared to actual simulated years; however, in the mountainous areas in the Sierras, standard maps show underestimation of the wind energy resources.  Incorporation of the tower and weather station data into the mesoscale model using a Four Dimensional Data Assimilation technique shows promise in improving wind energy maps.  The study also showed that microscale modeling can be used to indicate the best exact location for the turbine deployment within the mesoscale grid.

Presentations:

Koracin, D., and R. Reinhardt, 2006: Wind energy assessment for Nevada:  Observations and modeling. 61st American Chemical Society Northwest Regional Meeting, Reno, NV, 25-28 June 2006 (Invited talk).

Posters:

Belu, R., Koracin, D., Vellore, R. "Wind Energy Assessment for Nevada - Measurements and Modeling" 2009

Reinhardt, R., Koracin, D., Minor, T., Pepper, D., Hess, R., Osborn, D. "Wind Energy Assessment for Nevada and the Southwest: Improved Estimates of Wind Energy Potential"