Overview of preparation for the American WAKE ExperimeNt (AWAKEN)
Patrick Moriarty, Nicola Bodini, Stefano Letizia, Aliza Abraham, Tyler Ashley, Konrad Bärfuss, R. J. Barthelmie, Alan Brewer, Peter Brugger, Thomas Feuerle, Ariane Frère, Lexie Goldberger, Julia Gottschall, Nicholas Hamilton, Thomas Herges, Brian D. Hirth, Lin-Ya Hung, Giacomo Valerio Iungo, Hristo Ivanov, Colleen Kaul, Stefan Kern, Petra Klein, Raghavendra Krishnamurthy, Astrid Lampert, Julie K. Lundquist, Victor Morris, Rob Newsom, Mikhail Pekour, Yelena L. Pichugina, Fernando Porté-Angel, S. C. Pryor, Andrew Scholbrock, John S. Schroeder, Samuel Shartzer, Eric Simley, Lilén Vöhringer, Sonia Wharton, Daniel Zalkind
Abstract
The American WAKE ExperimeNt (AWAKEN) is a multi-institutional field campaign focused on gathering critical observations of wind farm–atmosphere interactions. These interactions are responsible for a large portion of the uncertainty in wind plant modeling tools that are used to represent wind plant performance both prior to construction and during operation and can negatively impact wind energy profitability. The AWAKEN field campaign will provide data for validation, ultimately improving modeling and lowering these uncertainties. The field campaign is designed to address seven testable hypotheses through the analysis of the observations collected by numerous instruments at 13 ground-based locations and on five wind turbines. The location of the field campaign in Northern Oklahoma was chosen to leverage existing observational facilities operated by the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program in close proximity to five operating wind plants. The vast majority of the observations from the experiment are publicly available to researchers and industry members worldwide, which the authors hope will advance the state of the science for wind plants and lead to lower cost and increased reliability of wind energy systems.