Wind energy represents more than 10 percent of the nation’s electricity mix, making it the largest source of renewable power generation in the United States. This energy source enables many states to meet their renewable energy goals. 

But implementing wind energy still comes with challenges. As wind becomes a larger fraction of the energy mix, cost-effective integration with the power grid requires accurate wind forecasts hours to a day ahead. This is particularly challenging in hilly and mountainous terrain, where even the best weather forecast models still struggle to accurately predict wind patterns. Without accurate forecasting, wind farm operators run the risk of producing less power than promised, or more power than the grid can accept, which impacts utility customers and revenue. 

Another critical challenge is gaining a better understanding of the potential impacts of wind development on the surrounding communities, environment, and wildlife. Timely, successful wind project siting and permitting increasingly depends on observation and knowledge of local wildlife movements and behavior patterns to mitigate potential ecosystem impacts.

Wind energy research at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is funded by the Department of Energy's Wind Energy Technologies Office. (WETO). PNNL partners with WETO to meet its twofold mission: enable the innovations needed to advance the nation’s wind energy systems, and address wind energy market and deployment barriers, including siting and environmental impacts for both offshore and land-based wind power.

To meet this mission, PNNL’s research focuses on six key areas: 

• Wind resource characterization: Improving our understanding of wind resources to reduce project uncertainty, advance forecasting, and reduce costs 
• Environmental monitoring and wind-wildlife interactions: Increasing our understanding of wind-wildlife interactions and developing monitoring technologies to mitigate environmental risk 
• Community values and ocean co-use: Exploring community values and concerns with offshore wind energy to facilitate equitable ocean co-use
• Wind systems integration: Enabling cost-effective, reliable, and resilient energy system operation with increasing levels of wind energy 
• Wind data management: Collecting, storing, curating, cataloging, preserving, and disseminating results generated by wind energy research 
• Distributed wind: Enabling wind energy for on-site and local power generation 

Use the links above to learn more about each capability and see examples of our work in each area. These examples illustrate PNNL’s unique combination of expertise across atmospheric sciences, instrument systems, distributed wind market analysis, environmental monitoring, and computational sciences. 

The PNNL-Sequim campus in Sequim, Washington, houses the only marine research facilities in the Department of Energy complex. The campus is uniquely positioned for marine-based research that is focused on helping the nation achieve sustainable energy, which includes wind energy development.

PNNL also leads an Energy Earthshot Research Center entitled Addressing Challenges in Energy: Floating Wind in a Changing Climate, which is focused on floating offshore wind energy. The center features an interdisciplinary team using scientific machine learning to develop a new understanding of meteorological and oceanic conditions to advance the design, control, and grid integration of floating offshore wind.