Title: Validation of wind resource and energy production simulations for small wind turbines in the United States

Abstract

Due to financial and temporal limitations, the small wind community relies upon simplified wind speed models and energy production simulation tools to assess site suitability and produce energy generation expectations. While efficient and user-friendly, these models and tools are subject to errors that have been insufficiently quantified at small wind turbine heights. This study leverages observations from meteorological towers and sodars across the United States to validate wind speed estimates from the Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis v5 (ERA5), and the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2), revealing average biases within ±0.5 m s^-1 at small wind hub heights. Observations from small wind turbines across the United States provide references for validating energy production estimates from the System Advisor Model (SAM), Wind Report, MyWindTurbine.com, and Global Wind Atlas 3 (GWA3), which are seen to overestimate actual annual capacity factors by 2.5, 4.2, 11.5, and 7.3 percentage points, respectively. In addition to quantifying the error metrics, this paper identifies sources of model and tool discrepancies, noting that interannual fluctuation in the wind resource, wind speed class, and loss assumptions produces more variability in estimates than different horizontal andmore » vertical interpolation techniques. The results of this study provide small wind installers and owners with information about these challenges to consider when making performance estimates and thus possible adjustments accordingly. Looking to the future, recognizing these error metrics and sources of discrepancies provides model and tool researchers and developers with opportunities for product improvement that could positively impact small wind customer confidence and the ability to finance small wind projects.« less

Authors:

Sheridan, Lindsay M.; Phillips, Caleb; Orrell, Alice C.; Berg, Larry K. ;

• Search DOE PAGES for author "Berg, Larry K."
• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-3362-9492"

Tinnesand, Heidi; Rai, Raj K.; Zisman, Sagi; Duplyakin, Dmitry; Flaherty, Julia E.

Publication Date:

Thu Mar 24 00:00:00 EDT 2022

Research Org.:

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)

OSTI Identifier:

1856545

Alternate Identifier(s):

OSTI ID: 1860228; OSTI ID: 1865325

Report Number(s):

PNNL-SA-166869; NREL/JA-2C00-82742
Journal ID: ISSN 2366-7451

Grant/Contract Number:  

AC05-76RL01830; AC36-08GO28308

Resource Type:

Published Article

Journal Name:

Wind Energy Science (Online)

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: Wind Energy Science (Online) Journal Volume: 7 Journal Issue: 2; Journal ID: ISSN 2366-7451

Publisher:

Copernicus GmbH

Country of Publication:

Germany

Language:

English

Subject:

17 WIND ENERGY