News

AWS Truewind, LLC, announced that it has won a competitive solicitation to work with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on a regional wind integration and modeling project. The project, entitled Development of Eastern Regional Wind Resource and Wind Plant Datasets, will examine the potential impacts of increased wind generation on the utility grid in the eastern United States. The study region ranges from the Dakotas down to Oklahoma and eastward to Maine, and includes the MISO, SPP, TVA, PJM, NYISO, ISO-NE, and MAPP transmission market areas.

 “This major effort will combine our advanced wind flow modeling and wind forecasting techniques to better understand the impact of wind’s variability on much of the country’s electricity system,” according to AWS Truewind Chief Technical Officer Michael Brower.   “This variability will be defined at time scales as short as one minute over a three-year period.”

The multi-phase project will apply state-of-the-art weather simulation models to develop regional wind resource estimates which will be used to produce output estimates for wind generation totaling several hundred gigawatts (GW) of capacity  The data from this project will be directly used by the Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study, a regional wind modeling project directed by NREL. The study is intended to help inform major policy decisions regarding transmission and generation planning, state and federal renewable energy targets, and other facets of energy supply in this region.