Wind energy represents more than 10 percent of the nation’s electricity mix, making it an important part of the U.S. energy portfolio. Wind has the power to help maintain grid reliability, create new jobs, and make energy more affordable for everyone; however, implementing wind energy still comes with challenges.
Cost-effective integration of wind energy with the power grid requires accurate wind forecasts—from hours to a day ahead. This is particularly challenging in hilly and mountainous terrain, where even the best weather forecast models still struggle to predict wind patterns accurately. Without accurate forecasting, wind farm operators risk producing less power than promised or more power than the grid can accept, affecting utility customers and revenue.
Another critical challenge is gaining a better understanding of the potential impacts of wind development on surrounding communities, environments, and wildlife. Timely, successful wind energy operations depend 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) includes cutting-edge research and development to support the grid by leveraging America’s vast wind resources, mitigating the impacts of wind energy infrastructure, and promoting economic growth. This work helps ensure that wind energy is affordable, reliable, and ready to help meet America’s rapidly growing energy demands.
PNNL research enables the innovations needed to advance the nation’s wind energy systems. It fills critical data gaps to give the wind industry the information it needs to make key decisions. PNNL’s work also supports a skilled workforce to build and maintain wind infrastructure. PNNL collaborates with stakeholders to find solutions enabling growth, lowering costs, and providing economic opportunities and benefits for local communities.
PNNL’s wind research focuses on resource characterization, environmental monitoring, economic benefits, system integration, data management, and distributed wind. These areas leverage PNNL’s unique combination of expertise across atmospheric sciences, instrument systems, market analysis, environmental sciences, and computational sciences.
