3TIER has announced that it was selected by the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to update the US wind integration dataset.
The integration of high penetrations of wind energy on the US electrical grid poses special challenges given the variable nature of wind generation. The updated foundational dataset will be used directly by NREL to explore the potential impacts of integrating large quantities of wind energy onto the US electrical grid. Accommodating increased quantities of wind energy while ensuring grid reliability will require infrastructure investments, such as new transmission lines and advanced energy dispatching technologies. By comparing wind energy production data created by 3TIER with energy demand projections, a picture emerges of prerequisite infrastructure changes, allowing relevant parties to determine the most cost-effective and pertinent forms of infrastructure expansion. The new study will use a consistent methodology to provide 2007-2011 wind data across the entire continental US, leveraging numerical weather prediction simulations and other statistical techniques. The resulting 100+ TB dataset will include 5 years of 5 minute meteorological data at a horizontal resolution of 2 km and detailed energy production profiles for 100,000 potential onshore wind project locations and 10,000 potential offshore project locations.
The integration of high penetrations of wind energy on the US electrical grid poses special challenges given the variable nature of wind generation. The updated foundational dataset will be used directly by NREL to explore the potential impacts of integrating large quantities of wind energy onto the US electrical grid. Accommodating increased quantities of wind energy while ensuring grid reliability will require infrastructure investments, such as new transmission lines and advanced energy dispatching technologies. By comparing wind energy production data created by 3TIER with energy demand projections, a picture emerges of prerequisite infrastructure changes, allowing relevant parties to determine the most cost-effective and pertinent forms of infrastructure expansion. The new study will use a consistent methodology to provide 2007-2011 wind data across the entire continental US, leveraging numerical weather prediction simulations and other statistical techniques. The resulting 100+ TB dataset will include 5 years of 5 minute meteorological data at a horizontal resolution of 2 km and detailed energy production profiles for 100,000 potential onshore wind project locations and 10,000 potential offshore project locations.
