Abstract
Impacts from current and future wind turbine (WT) deployments necessary to achieve 20% electricity from wind are analyzed using high resolution numerical simulations over the eastern USA. Theoretical scenarios for future deployments are based on repowering (i.e. replacing with higher capacity WTs) thus avoiding competition for land. Simulations for the contemporary climate and current WT deployments exhibit good agreement with observed electricity generation efficiency (gross capacity factors (CF) from simulations = 45–48%, while net CF for WT installed in 2016 = 42.5%). Under the scenario of quadrupled installed capacity there is a small decrease in system-wide efficiency as indicated by annual mean CF. This difference is approximately equal to that from the two simulation years and may reflect saturation of the wind resource in some areas. WT modify the local near-surface climate in the grid cells where they are deployed. The simulated impact on near-surface climate properties at both the regional and local scales does not increase with increasing WT installed capacity. Climate impacts from WT are modest compared to regional changes induced by historical changes in land cover and to the global temperature perturbation induced by use of coal to generate an equivalent amount of electricity.
Highlights
Impacts from current and future wind turbine (WT) deployments necessary to achieve 20% electricity from wind are analyzed using high resolution numerical simulations over the eastern United States of America (USA)
Consistent with evidence that the negative ENSO phase is typically associated with significantly stronger lower-troposphere wind speeds over the eastern USA26–28, total annual electricity production in the 1 WT simulation for the climates of 2008 and
Gross capacity factors (CF) reflect an upper bound on possible electrical power production and are higher than observed net CF for WT operating in the USA (∼36% for long-term operating wind farms in the d02 domain[27] and 42.5% for WT installations commissioned in 2016)
Summary
Impacts from current and future wind turbine (WT) deployments necessary to achieve 20% electricity from wind are analyzed using high resolution numerical simulations over the eastern USA. Under the scenario of quadrupled installed capacity there is a small decrease in system-wide efficiency as indicated by annual mean CF. This difference is approximately equal to that from the two simulation years and may reflect saturation of the wind resource in some areas. The simulated impact on near-surface climate properties at both the regional and local scales does not increase with increasing WT installed capacity. (ii) Unacceptably large inadvertent modification of climate at the local or regional scale[12] This is the first study to address these questions and employs a traceable and transparent experimental design in which the increase in IC is achieved by replacement of WT with newer, higher capacity WT
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