Offshore Hub-Height Wind and Turbulence Predictions in the Northeast US Using a Newly Developed PBL Parameterization in WRF

Offshore wind energy, a key component in expanding renewable energy sources and reducing fossil fuel dependency, has been prioritized by the US government with a target capacity of 30 GW by 2030. Therefore, accurate prediction of hub-height wind and turbulence is important for planning offshore wind farms to achieve optimal operational performance. In this study, we focused on assessing the factors that impact the prediction capability of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model for hub-height wind and turbulence in the offshore region of the Northeast US. To achieve that goal, we have employed a recently implemented 3D Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) scheme with PBL approximation within the WRF (version 4.4) model. The analysis involves conducting a full year of high-resolution (sub-kilometric) mesoscale simulations and evaluating against available observations. We have assessed key factors like atmospheric stability conditions, synoptic forcings, seasonality and wind direction to evaluate their influence on model performance. Our preliminary findings revealed a good correlation between the model predicted and observed hub-height wind speed, while the performance for turbulent kinetic energy was mixed. Additionally, we observed that atmospheric stability conditions influenced the model's performance. We will present our latest findings and discuss the challenges encountered in our study.