February, 2023 

OBJECTIVES 

Many countries around the world, including the United States, have set ambitious wind energy targets for the next decade and beyond. Achieving an energy system that depends on wind power for 50% of global electricity demands will require developers to deploy a magnitude more wind energy capacity than is currently installed. And, for the United States to make wind a foundational energy source for the clean energy transition, it will also have to make progress in all five of the grand challenge areas. With these R&D needs identified, researchers can better tailor their work to fill the gaps, which could enable more efficient, cheaper, and more reliable wind energy generation across the United States and the world.

Focus Areas

This effort identified three focus areas for research in wind energy science and technology as well as two that address environmental and societal impacts.

Grand Challenge 1: The Atmosphere

This effort identified three focus areas for research in wind energy science and technology as well as two that address environmental and societal impacts.

Grand Challenge 2: The Wind Turbine

Increasing sizes and flexibility of wind turbines have surpassed modeling tools. To update those models, researchers need more large-scale experimental data to validate upgrades and develop new simulation tools. On the smaller side of wind turbines, advancing small-scale wind turbines is necessary to support the growing distributed wind energy deployment.

Grand Challenge 3: The Plant and Grid

To optimize wind energy generation, further research must analyze complex air flow through wind farms and how wind farm and hybrid power plant systems can be the foundation for the future electric grid.

Grand Challenge 4: Environmental Codesign

Quantifying and reducing wind infrastructure-related impacts to the environment often require interdisciplinary research and integration of technology with wind turbines or wind farms. By codesigning a wind energy project with environmental considerations from inception, the industry can mitigate or minimize impacts that may delay or restrain future deployment goals.

Grand Challenge 5: Social Science

The social dynamics of wind energy development should also be considered along with efforts that focus on the technical elements of the field. Researchers and implementers can re-envision these dynamics and bolster opportunities for win-win outcomes.

Cross-Disciplinary Areas

The researchers surveyed in the course of these efforts also determined their level of interest on bilateral interdisciplinary challenges. In addition to the five grand challenges, the researchers explored the following cross-disciplinary topic areas:

• Environment-turbine
• Turbine-atmosphere
• Atmosphere-grid/plant
• Grid/plant-turbine
• Grid/plant-environment
• Atmosphere-environment
• Turbine-social
• Social-grid/plant.