The Role of Surface Energy Exchange for Simulating Wind Inflow: An Evaluation of Multiple Land Surface Models in WRF for the Southern Great Plains Site Field Campaign Report
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is used to investigate choice of land surface model (LSM) on the near-surface wind profile, including heights reached by multi-megawatt wind turbines. Simulations of wind profiles and surface energy fluxes were made using five LSMs of varying degrees of sophistication in dealing with soil-plant-atmosphere feedbacks for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) Central Facility in Oklahoma. Surface-flux and wind-profile measurements were available for validation. The WRF model was run for three two-week periods during which varying canopy and meteorological conditions existed. The LSMs predicted a wide range of energy-flux and wind-shear magnitudes even during the cool autumn period when we expected less variability. Simulations of energy fluxes varied in accuracy by model sophistication, whereby LSMs with very simple or no soil-plant-atmosphere feedbacks were the least accurate; however, the most complex models did not consistently produce more accurate results. Errors in wind shear also were sensitive to LSM choice and were partially related to the accuracy of energy flux data. The variability of LSM performance was relatively high, suggesting that LSM representation of energy fluxes in the WRF model remains a significant source of uncertainty for simulating wind turbine inflow conditions.
- Research Organization:
- DOE Office of Science Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Wind and Water Technologies Office (EE-4W)
- Contributing Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-7601830
- OSTI ID:
- 1254173
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/SC-ARM-14-040
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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