A2e is a multi-year U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research initiative targeting significant reductions in the cost of wind energy through an improved understanding of the complex physics governing electricity generation by wind plants.
This Energy Department video introduces the Atmosphere to Electrons (A2e) research initiative, which is a consortium of scientists from national laboratories, academia, and industry working to enable innovative wind plant technologies through an improved understanding of how wind power plants interact with our atmosphere.
A2e research focuses on evolving the next generation of automated wind plant technologies by developing high-performance computational capabilities and tools that predict and model the wind resource, capture the complexities of wind plant flows including turbine wake development, and control turbine interactions.
A2e is working toward a future in which:
- Wind plants are sited, built, and operated in a way that produces the most cost-effective, usable electric power
- The wind resource is actively monitored and manipulated through the wind plant to optimize energy capture and operate and deliver the most cost-effective electrons into the grid
- Wind turbines are actively controlled utilizing sensors and implementing wind plant control strategies that maximize performance for any given condition.
The question is, how do we do this cost effectively and reliably to ensure that the automated wind plant systems of tomorrow have both the operational efficiency that we seek and the economics that we need?
Atmosphere to Electrons is working toward an answer.