Plan view of the instantaneous horizontal velocity at 100 m above the surface for each domain in the Ts = 30°C tropical cyclone simulation (Figure from Sanchez Gomez et al 2023)

My recent research efforts have concentrated on the impact of tropical cyclones on wind energy. As the PI of the STORM project, I lead a team of researchers from four national laboratories—NREL, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)—as well as Johns Hopkins University and Brown University. The primary objecteve of STORM is to deepen our understanding of extreme wind and wave conditions generated by tropical cyclones and their subsequent impact on offshore wind turbines. By refining turbine design criteria for hurricane-prone regions, this project aims to influence international wind turbine design standards, thereby enhancing the reliability and safety of offshore wind installations globally.

Difference in wind speeds at 150 m height from two mesoscale model simulations: one including the presence of wind farms, and one without. This figure presents a snapshot in time that serves as a helpful visual in depicting the phenomena, but does not represent long-term average deficits.

This Joint-Industry Project (JIP) is uniting government entities, industry leaders, and research institutions to address the challenges of wake effects in offshore wind farms along the U.S. East Coast. Wake effects, which occur when wind turbines create wind speed shadows behind them, result in a reduced wind resource for downstream turbines. While wake effects are a known phenomenon that are accounted for using layout optimization design tools in single projects, as the United States prepares for extensive offshore wind arrays, addressing and minimizing wake-induced power losses from farm to farm becomes paramount. To this end, the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium (NOWRDC) has joined forces with leading subject matter researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to deepen the understanding of wake effects by considering various wind farm layouts, turbine spacing, and meteorological conditions, to ensure optimal power generation and efficiency in future US offshore wind developments.

The JIP aims to develop new methods to study cluster wakes and enhance existing tools like FLORIS to better account for farm-to-farm wake effects. The project will use a multi-fidelity optimization framework to identify key criteria for future turbine spacing and help select new wind energy sites on the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). The findings, including the combined power losses from cluster wake effects of multiple arrays, will be presented on a geo-spatial map so that regulators and other decision-makers will be able to use the data in order to optimize future U.S. offshore wind production.