The planet’s wind is a powerful but fickle energy source. Unlike nuclear or coal-fired power plants, which churn out electricity on command, wind farms produce an uneven energy supply depending on a day’s powerful gusts or gentle breezes. The scientific challenge is capturing this clean, renewable energy and converting it into a steady stream of electricity.
Through a major initiative under the Johns Hopkins Environment, Energy, Sustainability, and Health Institute (E2SHI), the National Science Foundation has awarded Johns Hopkins and collaborators two grants, totaling $6 million over five years, to head international and domestic teams to devise better ways to design and manage large-scale harvesting of intermittent wind power.
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Wind power now generates 3 percent of U.S. electricity.
“Using advanced computer simulation tools, we will develop more-efficient wind farm design and design better methods ofmoving this power into a power grid,” says Charles Meneveau, the Louis M. Sardella Professor of Mechanical Engineering and lead investigator on the first award.
In recent years, Meneveau has pioneered the use of computational fluid dynamics to better understand turbine spacing that maximizes energy output. Turns out, today’s giant turbines, with rotors 300 feet in diameter, rely heavily on upstream turbulence within wind farms. This turbulence helps draw kinetic energy from wind at high altitudes down to the ground, increasing power but also contributing to variability and intermittency.
With the first $4.3 million award, an international team of 20 researchers from the U.S. and Europe will create an integrated research and educational partnership for undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and faculty. The project will address such questions as inter-turbine spacing, ground roughness, and wind conditions, and use advanced computer simulations to develop moreefficient wind farm designs.
Under a second $1.7 million grant, headed by mechanical engineering Assistant Professor Dennice Gayme, a domestic team will develop tools to enable reliable and efficient grid operation. The team’s approach to balancing usage will consider the entire power system and include combinations of market incentives and technologybased approaches. Collaborators include North Carolina State University and Smith College.
Ben Hobbs, the Theodore M. and Kay W. Schad Professor of Environmental Management in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at the Whiting School, and co-principal investigator on both projects, will use scientific findings to improve U.S. energy policy. The U.S. has a goal of generating 20 percent of its electricity from wind by 2030.