Wind Energy News

Anticipating key features of wind plants a decade or more ahead of their installation can inform today's investment, research, and energy system planning decisions. Researchers elicited opinions from more than 140 of the world's leading experts about their expectations of future wind plant design in 2035.

Scientists determined that by increasing the accuracy of weather forecasts over the last decade, consumers netted at least $384 million in energy savings. The researchers based their predictions on NOAA's High Resolution Rapid Refresh model, which provides daily weather forecasts for every part of the U.S. These include wind speed and direction data, which utilities can use to gauge how much energy their turbines will produce.

Neural-Fly technology could one day build the future of package delivery drones and flying cars.

While wind power is expected to be a 'saving grace' during extreme winter storms, researchers wanted to look at whether storms could also disrupt power supplies and drive up prices.

Drawing on 70 years of historic wind and solar-power data, researchers built an AI model to predict the probability of a network-scale 'drought,' when daily production of renewables fell below a target threshold. Under a threshold set at the 30th percentile, when roughly a third of all days are low-production days, the researchers found that Texas could face a daily energy drought for up to four months straight. Batteries would be unable to compensate for a drought of this length, and if the system relied on solar energy alone, the drought could be expected to last twice as long -- for eight months.