Estimating the technical wind energy potential of Kansas that incorporates the effect of regional wind resource depletion by wind turbines

Abstract

Energy scenarios require realistic estimates of technical wind energy potentials – estimates for how much electricity can be generated by wind turbines given a certain level of deployed capacity within a region. These are typically obtained using observed wind speeds, neglecting the depletion of the wind energy resource with increasing deployment at the regional scale. Here, we use the kinetic energy budget of the atmosphere (KEBA) approach to evaluate the importance of this resource depletion effect for the technical potential of Kansas, USA. To do so, we first apply the KEBA approach to a previously conducted set of numerical simulations with the Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model. This set simulated the resource depletion effect for a range of different levels of wind turbine deployments within Kansas, which we use to test the KEBA approach. We specifically test the approach for nighttime and daytime conditions to capture the different mixing regimes of the atmospheric boundary layer. We find that KEBA can adequately capture the effect for both settings. We then extend our analysis by using ERA-5 forcing to the climatological scale. We find that this resource depletion effect increases almost linearly with the level of wind turbine deployment. Compared to previously published estimates for the technical potential for Kansas, the resource depletion effect lowers capacity factors by a third to a half. Since this resource depletion effect increases with installed capacity within a region, it is policy relevant even at relatively low deployment levels.