DOE gives $3.4mn for wind forecasting using wind farms

10.04.2010

DOE gives $3.4mn for wind forecasting using wind farms

15 September 2010-- The U.S. Department of Energy is awarding two wind energy projects a total of $3.4 million over two years to improve short-term wind forecasting, which will accelerate the use of wind power in electricity transmission networks by allowing utilities and grid operators to more accurately forecast when and where electricity will be generated from wind power.

The two funding recipients- AWS Truepower LLC in New York and WindLogics, Inc. in Minnesota - will lead teams of several partners and work with DOE and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to deploy advanced atmospheric measurement systems over a broad area, provide data that allow advanced weather prediction systems to improve short-term turbine-level wind forecasts, and demonstrate the value of these forecasting improvements for electric utility operations.

AWS Truepower, LLC will receive $2.15 million to target a region of high wind energy use in Texas, and will assess utility system benefits with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. The Truepower project team will also include Texas Technological University, North Carolina State University, the University of Oklahoma, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and consultants MESO, Inc., and ICF International.

WindLogics, a unit of NextEra, will receive $1.25 million to place wind projects across portions of several upper Midwest states, and will assess utility benefits with the Midwest Independent System Operator. NextEra will provide meteorological data from 14 wind plants totaling nearly 2 GW of operating capacity. Other partners in the WindLogics project will include South Dakota State University and NREL.

NOAA will provide project support in the areas of research instrument deployment and operation, data assimilation, advanced weather modeling, and meteorology expertise and analysis. A network of sophisticated atmospheric instrumentation will be deployed and operated in the regions identified and supported by the AWS Truepower and WindLogics teams.