Extended Abstract (844K)501
Numerical simulation of wind power potential in Upstate New York
Robert J. Ballentine, SUNY, Oswego, NY; and S. Steiger and D. B. Phoenix
Meteorologists at SUNY Oswego have been running the Weather Research and
Forecasting (WRF) model every day to produce high-resolution numerical
simulations of meteorological conditions over much of upstate New York. The
purpose of these simulations is to identify the potential for wind energy in
the region and to create a 'climatology' of wind speed, wind direction and
temperature at 10, 40 and 80 meters above the ground. We began archiving hourly
output from WRF in February 2009 and we will continue for at least the next two
years to create our data base. WRF is running on a doubly-nested grid to
ensure that both large-scale meteorological forcing and local geographical
effects are well-represented. The large domain has 12-km grid spacing covering
an area from eastern Iowa to western Labrador and from northern South Carolina
to James Bay. The intermediate grid has 4-km resolution and covers the eastern
Great Lakes region, mid-Atlantic states and most of New England. The fine grid
has 1.333-km resolution and covers an area 320 km by 200 km centered at Oswego.
The model has 33 vertical levels in a terrain-following system where the lowest
sigma levels correspond to 10m, 40m and 80m above ground under typical
meteorological conditions. Initial data and boundary values (updated every
three hours out to 24 hours) for the large domain are obtained each evening
from the 0000 UTC run of the operational North American Mesoscale (NAM) model
available online from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP).
During Summer 2009, a meteorology major, funded by a grant from the
Department of Energy, is archiving WRF output and comparing WRF-simulated wind
and temperature predictions with observations from seven regularly-reporting
surface stations in the Lake Ontario region including Oswego. We expect to use
our recently acquired mobile tethersonde system later this year to measure
winds at five levels in the lowest 150 meters above ground to help validate WRF
predictions of wind and temperature profiles for a variety of atmospheric
conditions. WRF-simulated soundings will be compared with the soundings
obtained near Oswego using our Vaisala upper-air tracking system.
The WRF predictions of 80-m wind speed are being used to compute hourly and
monthly averages of theoretical wind energy generation for hypothetical 1500 KW
wind turbines located at all of the 36000 grid points on the fine grid. Similar
estimates of wind energy generation from small (5 KW) turbines are being made
using the 40-m WRF winds. These computations will be used to identify sites
which have the greatest wind power potential. Our preliminary results for the
period February-July 2009 show that theoretical power generation ranges from 25
to 45% of rated output with the greatest values occurring over the interior of
Lake Ontario. This does not include losses associated with turbine design. Over
land the greatest values appear to be found in regions of highest terrain
(e.g., the Tug Hill Plateau and the hills south of the New York State Thruway).
Wind direction may play a significant role. Plots showing wind vectors and
simulated wind power contours for a few selected days indicate that wind power
potential is greatest in the areas of steepest downslope.
Joint Poster Session , New Energy Economy Poster Session
Wednesday, 20 January 2010, 2:30 PM-4:00 PM, Exhibit Hall B2
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