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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

JHTDB-wind: a web-accessible large-eddy simulation database of a wind farm with virtual sensor querying

This paper introduces JHTDB-wind (https://turbulence.idies.jhu.edu/datasets/windfarms, last access: 11 November 2025), a publicly accessible database containing large-eddy simulation (LES) data from wind farms. Building on the framework of the Johns Hopkins Turbulence Database (JHTDB), which hosts direct numerical simulation (DNS) and some LES datasets of canonical turbulent flows, JHTDB-wind stores the 4D space–time history of the flow and provides users the ability to access and query the data via a web-based virtual sensor interface. The initial dataset comprises LES results from a large wind farm with 10×6 turbines, modeled using a filtered actuator line method, under conventionally neutral atmospheric conditions. These data comprise 1 h (hour) of flow field data (velocity, pressure, potential temperature deviation, subgrid-scale (SGS) eddy viscosity, and turbine forces, approximately 15 TB (terabytes) and wind turbine data – including both turbine-level operational quantities and blade-level aerodynamic quantities (approximately 1.3 TB) – stored in Zarr and Parquet formats, respectively. Data retrieval is facilitated by the giverny Python package, allowing remote users to query the database in Python or MATLAB (C and Fortran support are available for flow field data). This paper details the simulation setup and demonstrates data access through examples that analyze wind farm flow structures and turbine performance. The framework is extensible to future datasets, including the JHTDB-wind diurnal cycle simulation analyzed in Xiao et al. (2025).

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Tropical Cyclone Wind Shear-Relative Asymmetry in Reanalyses

Abstract While tropical cyclones (TCs) are axisymmetric vortices to the first order, they often exhibit noteworthy structural asymmetries. These often result from environmental vertical wind shear, which tilts the vortex and induces a wavenumber 1 pattern in the circulation and precipitation fields. Reanalyses and climate models have improved in representing the TC structure and climatology, but their relatively coarse resolution and dependence on parameterized physics cast doubt on their ability to capture the asymmetric TC structure. We perform the most comprehensive process-oriented assessment of TC asymmetry to date in reanalyses. Specifically, we analyze the composite shear-relative TC structure in ERA5 and Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR), which vary in their resolutions, physical parameterization suites, and data assimilation techniques. These structures are compared with aircraft reconnaissance radar observations. In agreement with the observations, the strongest tangential winds are usually found left-of-shear, while inner core rainfall, ascent, vortex tilt, and low-level inflow are favored directly downshear or in the downshear-left quadrant. Outer rainband convection generally peaks in the downshear-right quadrant. Thermodynamic asymmetries are also apparent, with anomalous low-level moisture right-of-shear, midlevel warmth in the upshear-right quadrant (uptilt), and cloud properties suggestive of a realistic precipitation life cycle from growth to fallout. We also decompose rainfall contributions from the convective parameterization and large-scale cloud schemes and highlight the roles of vorticity advection, buoyancy advection, and diabatic processes in driving asymmetric vertical motions in the inner core and outer rainband regions. Our results suggest that process-level studies of TC asymmetry and TC–wind shear interaction under future warming are viable using climate models. Significance Statement Asymmetries are common in tropical cyclones (TCs), influencing their intensity, track, and hazards. Vertical wind shear often plays a leading-order role in causing these asymmetries. It is uncertain how well asymmetric structures and processes are captured in reanalyses and global climate models (GCMs) with grid spacings of 0.25° and coarser. In this study, we first evaluate TC asymmetry in reanalyses, which have the benefit of being forced by observations. This helps to assess whether the resolutions associated with GCMs sufficiently capture asymmetric structures and processes and motivates upcoming work with free-running GCMs to study how TC asymmetry may change in a warming climate.

Carstens, Jacob D.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Comparison of wind-farm control strategies under realistic offshore wind conditions: wake quantities of interest

Wind-farm control strategies aim to increase the efficiency, and therefore lower the levelized cost of energy, of wind farms. This is done by using turbine settings such as the yaw angle, blade pitch angles, or generator torque to manipulate the wake that negatively affects downstream turbines in the farm. Two inherently different wind-farm control methods have been identified in the literature: wake steering (WS) and active wake mixing (AWM). As one of two companion papers focused on understanding practical aspects of these two wind-farm control strategies using large-eddy simulation (LES), we below analyze the wake quantities of interest for a single wind turbine performing WS and AWM, while the companion article (Frederik et al., 2025) focuses on turbine quantities of interest including power and structural loads for the same computational setup and also includes two-turbine arrays with full and partial wake overlap. The simulations, which are based in the LES solver AMR-Wind, are tailored to have inflow conditions representative of measurements from a site off the East Coast of the US, including with strong veer and low turbulence. The turbine, which is modeled in OpenFAST and coupled to the LES, is the IEA 15 MW, an open-source offshore design. After presenting an overview of the wake recovery for the different wake-control cases, the analysis probes the fluid-dynamic causes for the different performance of the arrays reported in the companion article by examining control volumes around the wakes and the budget of the mean-flow kinetic energy (MKE) within these volumes. In the high veer environment considered, the MKE recovery is dominated by mean convection, and this is shown to especially benefit the WS strategy when a neighboring turbine is directly downstream: there is ≈65 % more available power for a downstream turbine than in the baseline case, and this power is gained primarily through mean convection on the left-tip and top-tip faces of the control volume. However, the case with imperfect knowledge of the exact wind direction favors the pulse-type AWM strategy, largely because of ≈9 % increased turbulent entrainment from aloft versus the baseline that could be related to an apparent resistance to skewing in the pulsed wake. The general reduced effectiveness of helix-type and other individual-pitch-based AWM strategies for inflow with high veer and low turbulence as reported in the companion paper is due, in part, to low magnitudes of phase-averaged turbulent entrainment. Two main findings of this study are thus that veer has a significant impact on the effectiveness of different wake-control strategies and that pulse-type AWM may be a useful strategy when the objective is power maximization in realistic, offshore flow environments with imperfect knowledge of the exact wake overlap position on the downstream turbine.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

AMR-Wind: A Performance-Portable, High-Fidelity Flow Solver for Wind Farm Simulations

We present AMR-Wind, a verified and validated high-fidelity computational-fluid-dynamics code for wind farm flows. AMR-Wind is a block-structured, adaptive-mesh, incompressible-flow solver that enables predictive simulations of the atmospheric boundary layer and wind plants. It is a highly scalable code designed for parallel high-performance computing with a specific focus on performance portability for current and future computing architectures, including graphical processing units (GPUs). In this paper, we detail the governing equations, the numerical methods, and the turbine models. Establishing a foundation for the correctness of the code, we present the results of formal verification and validation. The verification studies, which include a novel actuator line test case, indicate that AMR-Wind is spatially and temporally second-order accurate. The validation studies demonstrate that the key physics capabilities implemented in the code, including actuator disk models, actuator line models, turbulence models, and large eddy simulation (LES) models for atmospheric boundary layers, perform well in comparison to reference data from established computational tools and theory. We conclude with a demonstration simulation of a 12-turbine wind farm operating in a turbulent atmospheric boundary layer, detailing computational performance and realistic wake interactions.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Modeling and Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop Validation of Synchronous Wind: An Inverterless Grid-Forming Wind Power Plant: Preprint

Grid-forming (GFM) control of Type-3 and Type-4 wind turbine generators has attracted substantial attention in power systems research; however, the limited over-current capability of power electronics converters continues to deteriorate the grid strength of the evolving power systems. Synchronous wind, also known as Type-5 wind turbine generator (WTG), offers a unique GFM solution to address grid integration and grid strength issues by keeping the grid largely synchronous at very high penetration levels of renewable generation. A Type-5 WTG interfaces to the electric grid via a synchronous generator (SG) driven by a variable-speed hydraulic torque converter; hence, the wind rotor operates in variable-speed mode for maximum power generation and the generator shaft remains synchronous to the grid. This paper developed and tested a high-fidelity model of Type-5 WTG under power-hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) testing environment. The PHIL demonstration showed that a Type-5 WTGs inherently behaves as a GFM unit and can obtain similar performance in terms of power responses, wind rotor dynamics, and efficiency compared to Type-3 WTG in high wind conditions. The developed model also provides further insight on how Type-5 WTGs can benefit the smooth transition to power systems with high integration level of inverter-based resources.

grid strength↗
DOE OSTI2025

Twelve turbine wind farm simulation with AMR-Wind

This dataset contains simulation data of a twelve turbine wind farm simulation performed with AMR-Wind. The simulation is documented in Kuhn, M. B., Henry de Frahan, M. T., Mohan, P., Deskos, G., Churchfield, M., Cheung, L., ... & Sprague, M. (2025). AMR‐Wind: A Performance‐Portable, High‐Fidelity Flow Solver for Wind Farm Simulations. Wind Energy, 28(5), e70010 (https://doi.org/10.1002/we.70010).

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

How Does Vertical Wind Shear Influence Updraft Characteristics and Hydrometeor Distributions in Supercell Thunderstorms?

Abstract Vertical wind shear is known to affect supercell thunderstorms by displacing updraft hydrometeor mass downshear, thereby facilitating the storms’ longevity. Shear also impacts the size of supercell updrafts, with stronger shear leading to wider, less dilute, and stronger updrafts with likely greater hydrometeor production. To more clearly define the role of shear across different vertical layers on hydrometeor concentrations and displacements relative to supercell updrafts, a suite of idealized numerical model simulations of supercells was conducted. Shear magnitudes were systematically varied across the 0–1, 1–6, and 6–12 km AGL layers, while the thermodynamic environment was held fixed. Simulations show that as shear magnitude increases, especially from 1 to 6 km, updrafts become wider and less dilute with an increase in hydrometeor loading, along with an increase in the low-level precipitation area/rate and total precipitation accumulation. Even with greater updraft hydrometeor loading amid stronger shear, updrafts are more intense in stronger shear simulations due to larger thermal buoyancy owing to wider, less dilute updraft cores. Furthermore, downshear hydrometeor displacements are larger in environments with stronger 1–6-km shear. In contrast, there is relatively less sensitivity of hydrometeor concentrations and displacements to variations in either 0–1- or 6–12-km shear. Results are consistent across free tropospheric relative humidity sensitivity simulations, which show an increase in updraft size and hydrometeor mass with increasing free tropospheric relative humidity owing to a reduction in entrainment-driven dilution for wider updrafts in moister environments. Significance Statement Rotating thunderstorms, known as supercells, are able to persist for multiple hours. One common explanation is that large changes in wind speed and/or direction with height, or shear, transport rain/hail away from supercell updrafts, supporting their maintenance. The strong shear within supercell environments, however, may also lead to greater rail/hail amounts, thereby leading to weaker storms due to this extra mass of water/ice within updrafts. Furthermore, the impact of shear across different height layers on supercell rain/hail characteristics has not been thoroughly investigated. In this study, computer simulations of supercells were conducted to determine that shear occurring between 1 and 6 km above ground level has a large impact on rain/hail distribution in supercells and that stronger shear in this layer leads to wider/stronger supercells with greater rain/hail accumulations at the surface. Additionally, some of the extra mass of water/ice is transported farther away from updrafts due to the stronger environmental storm-relative winds.

Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences↗
DOE OSTI2025

Winds of fortune? Understanding the geographic, sociodemographic, and temporal distribution of benefit mechanisms from land-based wind projects in the United States

Despite decades of research on factors shaping local responses to wind development, there is relatively little known about benefit mechanisms (e.g., agreements, funds, donations) used by developers in the U.S. land-based wind sector. To address this gap, we collected benefit mechanism data across all current utility-scale land-based wind projects installed between 1982 and 2024 (n = 1047), finding that just under one-third of projects had a benefit mechanism attached to them. We find the use of benefit mechanisms has become more common over time, is associated with larger projects, and varies by region. In terms of host community characteristics, the use of benefit mechanisms is associated with characteristics like higher education level, higher percent white, higher percent Republican, higher decision-making capacity, lower unemployment rate, and higher poverty rate. Building on a theoretical framework of purposes, we discuss what these findings could suggest about the motivations driving developers' use of these mechanisms, such as increasing local acceptance of a wind project or supporting distributive fairness. This first-of-its-kind study builds a comprehensive understanding of how benefit mechanisms have been used in the U.S. wind industry throughout its history, which can inform future approaches to benefit-sharing across sectors.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modeling and Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop Validation of Synchronous Wind: An Inverterless Grid-Forming Wind Power Plant

Grid-forming (GFM) control of Type-3 and Type-4 wind turbine generators (WTGs) has attracted substantial attention in power systems research; however, the limited overcurrent capability of power electronics converters continues to deteriorate the grid strength of the evolving power systems. Synchronous wind, also known as a Type-5 WTG, offers a unique GFM solution to address grid integration and grid strength issues by keeping the grid largely synchronous at very high integration levels of renewable generation. A Type-5 WTG interfaces with the electric grid via a synchronous generator driven by a variable-speed hydraulic torque converter; hence, the wind rotor operates in variable-speed mode for maximum power generation, and the generator shaft remains synchronous to the grid. This paper develops and tests a high-fidelity model of a Type-5 WTG in a power-hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) testing environment. The PHIL demonstration shows that a Type-5 WTG inherently behaves as a GFM unit and can obtain similar performance in terms of power responses, wind rotor dynamics, and efficiency compared to a Type-3 WTG in high-wind conditions. The developed model provides further insight into how Type-5 WTGs can benefit the smooth transition to power systems with high integration levels of inverter-based resources.

grid strength↗
DOE OSTI2024

Unseen Winds: Harnessing High-Altitude Winds in the Southeast USA

This project aims to identify potential sites in the United States for further testing and development of airborne wind energy systems (AWES). Through industry questionnaires and interviews with AWES companies, the study assesses existing test sites' capabilities and gaps, leading to a three-tiered test site strategy: short-duration prototype demonstrations, long-duration technical assessments and power validations, and airspace interaction and deconfliction studies. Notably, the southeastern United States presents significant potential for AWES due to its lack of traditional wind turbines, which is attributed to low wind speeds at lower altitudes. However, wind conditions improve significantly at higher altitudes, making this region a promising candidate for AWES deployment. The project considers factors such as wind resources, infrastructure proximity, social acceptance, and environmental impacts to recommend sites that can support the unique needs of AWES manufacturers and facilitate their commercialization. Early findings suggest rural communities with low grid resiliency could benefit economically and technologically from hosting AWES test sites, especially with operator training centers and potential for long-term skilled employment in future disaster relief and other applications.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Forecasts for Land-Based Wind Deployment in the United States: Wind Industry Survey Results [Slides]

Recent land-based wind deployment in the United States has been sluggish, and expectations for future growth have moderated in recent years. Berkeley Lab conducted a brief survey of wind industry stakeholders to better understand barriers and solutions. The focus of the survey was on land-based wind projects in the United States – not offshore wind or distributed small wind projects. Respondents identified challenges related to the grid and to siting as the most pressing concerns.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Observations of wind farm wake recovery at an operating wind farm

Abstract. The interplay of momentum surrounding wind farms significantly influences wake recovery, affecting the speed at which wakes return to their freestream velocities. Under stable atmospheric conditions, wind farm wakes can extend over considerable distances, leading to sustained vertical momentum flux downstream, with variations observed throughout the diurnal cycle. Particularly in regions such as the US Great Plains, stable conditions can induce low-level jets (LLJs), impacting wind farm performance and power output. This study examines the implications of wake recovery using long-term observations of vertical momentum flux profiles across diverse atmospheric conditions. In these observations, several key findings were observed, such as (a) LLJ heights being altered downstream of a wind farm, especially when the LLJs are below 250 m above ground level; (b) a notable impact of LLJ height on wake recovery being observed using momentum flux profiles at upwind and downwind locations, wherein LLJs between 250 and 500 m above ground level resulted in larger momentum transfer within the wake (i.e., smaller velocity deficit) compared to LLJs below 250 m above ground level; (c) the largest momentum flux variability being observed during stable atmospheric conditions, with non-negligible variability observed during neutral and unstable atmospheric conditions; (d) detection of wake effects almost always being observed throughout the atmospheric boundary layer height; and finally (e) enhancement of wake recovery being observed in the presence of propagating gravity waves. These insights deepen our understanding of the intricate dynamics governing wake recovery in wind farms, advancing efforts to model and predict their behavior across varying atmospheric contexts. In addition, the performance of large-eddy-simulation-based semi-empirical internal boundary layer height model estimates incorporating real-world atmospheric and turbine inputs was evaluated using observations during LLJ conditions.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Southern Company Services: Project 2: Tall Tower Wind Technical Potential for the Southeast (Modifications 4, 5), Project 4: Offshore Wind Potential for Southern Company Services (Modifications 7, 8)

Project 2: The National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) and Southern Company Services (SCS) seek to establish an agreement to assess the technical potential for wind energy in the Southeastern U.S. SCS has requested that NLR conduct a detailed assessment of system performance, available capacity, transmission distance, and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) at turbine hub heights of 100m to 160m within the SCS service territory. NLR will also provide an assessment of utility photovoltaic (PV) technical potential within the SCS service territory. NLR has unique modeling capabilities to assist SCS with high spatial and temporal resolution assessment of wind and PV technical potential, considering geospatial constraints. Project 4: NLR and SCS seek to develop a spatially explicit techno-economic assessment for offshore wind energy in the Southeastern U.S. The analysis aims to characterize the regional sensitivities of offshore wind plant costs and performance, underwater cabling, potential siting constraints, and landfall spur transmission costs.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

IEA Wind Task 49: Reference Site Conditions for Floating Wind Arrays

The commercial-scale deployment of floating offshore wind (FOW) projects is expected to take place in a diverse range of sites that may differ significantly from existing fixed-bottom projects. FOW farms are particularly sensitive to the water depth and the meteorological and oceanographic (metocean) and geotechnical conditions at the project site due to the wave-induced system motions and loads as well as the anchoring system constraints imposed by the seafloor conditions. Uncertainty around the site conditions will permeate through all aspects of project design, leading to suboptimal and overly conservative designs, increased costs, and adversely affected performance. As FOW expands into a global industry, metocean and geotechnical conditions will increasingly vary for projects located in different geographic regions or in far-from-shore, deep-water sites. This study represents the outputs of work package 1 of International Energy Agency Wind Task 49, which focuses on the integrated design of floating wind arrays. The primary goal of this study is to establish the type of parameters and constraints required to characterize FOW array reference sites; provide a realistic and publicly available set of reference site conditions to the FOW community as a baseline set of data for individual research projects; identify and categorize any critical gaps in the existing data or methodologies required to define reference site characteristics; and inform and support the design of reference FOW arrays. A building block concept was developed for synthesizing reference sites for the design of FOW arrays. The building blocks include three classes of site conditions focusing on the techno-economic design of FOW projects: metocean conditions, seabed conditions, and coastal infrastructure. All reference site data produced and collected in this study are publicly available.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Critical design load case fatigue and ultimate failure simulation for a 10-m H-type vertical-axis wind turbine

While previous studies investigating critical VAWT design load cases have focused on large and relatively flexible Darrieus designs, the bulk of current commercial products seeking certification fall in the relatively small, stiff, and H-type configuration, such as the XFlow Energy Corporation turbine that this study compares against. Understanding the critical design load case impacts for both fatigue and ultimate failure for this size and type of VAWT are imperative for certification. The abil

Brownstein, Ian↗
DOE OSTI2025

Reconciling Heliostat and Solar Panel Wind Loads To Develop a Reduced-Order Model for Heliostat Wind Loads

This work has been carried out as part of the HelioCon Field Deployment subtask, with the aim to distill published literature in papers and standards on heliostat and solar panel wind loads to develop a reduced order model for heliostat wind loads. It is intended to be understood and applied by structural engineers and heliostat designers as inputs to determine wind loads on heliostats due to the underlying derivations and factors that influence the complex structural dynamics and wind-induced behavior of heliostats.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

BIL GRID-READY WIND: Reliable and Economical Grid Services Design, Implementation, and Demonstration at the Great Pathfinder Wind Power Plant

The GRID-READY WIND project aimed to demonstrate the ability of utility-scale wind power plants (WPPs) to deliver traditional and emerging grid services (GSs) in both grid-following (GFL) and grid-forming (GFM) modes through a centralized control framework, supplemented by local control adjustments at the wind turbine generator as needed. Throughout the project, the team offered recommendations on how the grid services demonstrated with WPPs could be applied to other inverter-based resources (IBRs), such as photovoltaic (PV) systems and battery energy storage systems (BESS), while considering the unique dynamics of these resources arising from their energy generation characteristics. The project sought to enhance the confidence of system operators (SOs) and planners in utilizing WPPs, alongside other IBRs such as PV plants and BESS, to provide essential grid services over extended periods under diverse operating conditions, thereby supporting their integration into the bulk power system.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize Phase 2 (Commercialization of Wind Turbine Blade Waste (WTBW)-Based, Lightweight, Cementitious Composite Materials): Cooperative Research and Development Final Report, CRADA Number CRD-24-31305

The National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) and AltiSora, LLC., will develop new lightweight cementitious composite material technologies that will utilize wind turbine blade waste as a raw material to; (1) allow a high value addition (2) at low cost, enabling (3) a significant waste consumption volume; while (4) consuming the entire wind turbine blade, without (5) creating any waste or emissions and to also (6) offer specific benefits to communities involved.

17 WIND ENERGY↗