SimWIND: Software to Support Wind Siting and Environmental Challenges

Wind power is the largest source of new renewable power generation added in the United States since 2000, and DOE-EERE’s Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) (https://en- ergy.gov/eere/wind) has an aggressive plan for wind energy to provide 20% of US electricity needs by 2030 (double 2017’s 10%) and 35% by 2050 (https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/ maps/wind- vision). WETO’s Wind Vision plan outlined two key challenges that remain today: enhanced trans- mission infrastructure, streamlined siting and permitting regimes and addressing transmission challenges such as siting and cost allocation of new transmission lines to access the Nation's best wind resources. We propose to develop a new software package, called SimWIND, that directly addresses these challenges, with a focus on the FOA’s need for Technical Solutions to Offshore and Land-Based Wind Siting and Environmental Challenges, including minimizing impacts on natural resource and societal impacts including sensitive wildlife, radar systems, historic properties/settings, cul- tural landscapes, and other human activities. Further, we address capability gaps identified by our key SimWIND partners, including the Midwest Independent Service Operator (MISO), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the Great Plains Institute (GPI), and Resources for the Future (RFF); see letters of commitment and support. The SimWIND software will support wind energy planning by balancing (1) natural resource and societal impacts and other environmental, (2) wind power generation potential (i.e., wind-gener- ated electricity at any given site), (3) transmission planning and routing, and (4) integration into the electric grid. These are four pieces to the puzzle that are highly dependent and with significant feedbacks. Specifically, SimWIND will leverage advances from CARBON SOLUTIONS’ R&D 100 Award-winning SimCCSPRO software to simultaneously and geospatially optimize wind power (i) siting, (ii) transmission, and (iii) delivery and grid integration. These three key stages of wind power development are highly connected and must be considered simultaneously. For example, identifying sites to best access wind resources necessarily relies on considering siting issues (e.g., environmental challenges), transmission, and delivery and grid integration. Further, based on part- ner research, as many as 90% of planned wind energy projects fail at the point of trying to connect to the grid due to interconnect congestion. Thus, this must be taken into account during all planning stages.