Renewable Energy Collaboration Grows
Boulder Lab Leads NOAA Effort to Support Deployment of Renewables

Katy Human
Earth System Research Laboratory
NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research

January 15, 2009 — NOAA researchers have long worked to improve scientific understanding and prediction of weather, climate, and climate change. Now, scientists at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., are working to help support alternative energy production by using NOAA’s extensive observation networks and modeling skills.

NOAA’s observing networks and models were not developed for the renewable industry, said ESRL meteorologist Jim Wilczak, but energy companies are already using NOAA data to guide wind farm deployment, select solar sites, and predict daily energy demand — and the renewable energy community is asking us to do more.

“NOAA is starting to  thinkof renewable energy as a primary issue, not secondary,” said Wilczak. “We are making this an active collaboration.”

To that end, Wilczak and ESRL analyst Melinda Marquis are leading the agency into a formal relationship with Energy Department’s  National Renewable Energy Laboratory in nearby Golden, Colo. Last fall, ESRL director Sandy MacDonald and NREL director Dan Arvizu signed a letter of intent to build on past joint work on wind energy by working together on projects that “advance national interest.”

Marquis said this collaboration will advance three linked goals: meeting energy demand, supporting the economy with quality jobs, and reducing the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

A more detailed Memorandum of Understanding is in the works, Marquis said, and the list of possible collaborative topics is long, given ESRL’s “expertise in measurement systems, observational networks, and short- and long-term forecasts.”

Over the last few years, ESRL scientists have collaborated with NREL on smaller projects related to wind energy. Expanded work could include establishing wind-energy test beds to measure and improve the prediction of winds at the 20 meter to 200 meter height of wind turbines — a poorly instrumented region of the atmosphere. “There’s costly imprecision in our models,” said Bob Hawsey, associate director for Renewable Electricity and End Use Systems at NREL.

In addition, ESRL researchers could work toward more precise, high-resolution, and more quickly updated weather forecasts, which are key in predicting energy demand and supply. Clouds and wind speeds matter if wind or solar energy is in the mix.

ESRL also could use its surface radiation network — eight sites in the United States — to provide ground truth for error-prone satellite solar measurements,

Lucy Pao, a professor specializing in control systems at the University of Colorado at Boulder, applauded ESRL’s growing work in renewable energy forecasting. “I’m very interested in tying together atmospheric science and engineering to enable better systems from turbines to wind farms,” said Pao.

In Pao’s research on control of wind turbines, she is particularly interested in faster, more comprehensive wind forecasts and measurements.

Other NOAA laboratories — from the Atlantic Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory to the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory — have data and research expertise relevant to wave energy, ocean currents, and other forms of renewable energy, Wilczak said. “Our vision is for all of NOAA to be involved.”