Category: Renewable Energy

New Paper: Estimating #offshore #windpower in the German bight. It describes the depletion effects of the #windenergy resource and its implications for the 70 GW target in an accessible way, based on our Agora Energiewende study. https://doi.org/10.1002/piuz.202201654 https://export.arxiv.org/pdf/2301.01043

~ Axel Kleidon ~ Leave a comment

Offshore wind energy is rapidly growing, but what happens when more and more wind turbines deplete the regional wind energy resource?

Continue reading “New Paper: Estimating #offshore #windpower in the German bight. It describes the depletion effects of the #windenergy resource and its implications for the 70 GW target in an accessible way, based on our Agora Energiewende study. https://doi.org/10.1002/piuz.202201654 https://export.arxiv.org/pdf/2301.01043” →
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We’ll be at #EGU22, showing how radiation and maximum power shape temperatures, their extremes, the atmospheric circulation and the wind energy resource. @akleidon @s_ghausi @yinglin_tian

~ Axel Kleidon ~ Leave a comment

Corona is still around, also in Vienna, but the EGU General Assembly will nevertheless happen again, in a hybrid form. We are thrilled to be there physically, giving our 6 minute short talks on our work, and look forward to seeing and talking to you there!

Continue reading “We’ll be at #EGU22, showing how radiation and maximum power shape temperatures, their extremes, the atmospheric circulation and the wind energy resource. @akleidon @s_ghausi @yinglin_tian” →

“Erneuerbare Energien – einfach nachgerechnet” – unser Beitrag zum MINT Festival der @UniJena am Donnerstag.  Hier gibt’s weitere Infos und Links. #moMINTmal21 @MPI_BGC

~ Axel Kleidon ~ Leave a comment

Wieviel erneuerbare Energie gibt es eigentlich? Reicht sie für die Energiewende in Deutschland?  Die Antworten liefern einfache, physikalisch-basierte Abschätzungen, bei der das Erdsystem im Mittelpunkt steht sowie die Umwandlungen von der Energie im Sonnenlicht in andere Formen. Und dabei steht etwas Physik, genauer gesagt, die Thermodynamik im Mittelpunkt. Das Ergebnis ist nicht ganz so, wie man es vielleicht erwarten würde. Nämlich, dass es zwar jede Menge erneuerbare Energie gibt, aber auch, dass die Nutzung der Solarenergie mit großem Abstand auf Platz 1 liegt, und nicht die Windenergie. Selbst im nicht ganz so sonnigen, aber oft windigen Deutschland. 

Continue reading ““Erneuerbare Energien – einfach nachgerechnet” – unser Beitrag zum MINT Festival der @UniJena am Donnerstag.  Hier gibt’s weitere Infos und Links. #moMINTmal21 @MPI_BGC” →

#vEMS21: Our updates on using #thermodynamics for land-atmosphere interactions, the precipitation response to #globalwarming, and the #windenergy potential in the German bight

~ Axel Kleidon ~ Leave a comment

With summer coming to a close, we are back to present new insights from ongoing research in extreme precipitation events, offshore wind energy and thermodynamics at the European Meteorological Society Annual Meeting 2021. The event, which will be held online next week (6 – 10 September 2021), focuses on weather and climate research and services for the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Read on to find out more details about when and what each of us will be presenting.

Continue reading “#vEMS21: Our updates on using #thermodynamics for land-atmosphere interactions, the precipitation response to #globalwarming, and the #windenergy potential in the German bight” →

The Danish energy island in the North sea: By how much could the atmospheric response to many wind turbines lower the expected yields? Using KEBA to derive a simple, physical answer.

~ Axel Kleidon ~ 2 Comments

Denmark plans to expand offshore wind energy, and to do so, wants to create an artificial island in the North sea.  This plan is based on a cost-benefit analysis, which is based on an estimate of how much electricity generation can be expected from wind turbines in that region.  Such wind resource estimates use highly resolved wind fields, turbine characteristics as well as their spatial arrangement, but they typically neglect the atmospheric response to the turbines.  Each turbine removes kinetic energy from the atmosphere to generate its electricity, so more turbines remove more energy from the atmosphere, leaving a greater impact behind.  What this means is that such estimates typically turn out to be too high (see e.g., here), with a greater bias with greater installed capacity, as we have shown for German offshore scenarios, or in a new study just published.  So when a colleague asked me about my opinion, I thought this is a good occasion to use our KEBA approach, which takes the atmospheric response into account, and redo the estimate.

Continue reading “The Danish energy island in the North sea: By how much could the atmospheric response to many wind turbines lower the expected yields? Using KEBA to derive a simple, physical answer.” →

#vEGU21 Next week we’ll present our work on precipitation scaling, diurnal temperature range, offshore wind, and limits to vegetation productivity based on our thermodynamic Earth system view

~ Axel Kleidon ~ Leave a comment

Thermodynamics rules the world, as well as the science that we present at this year’s EGU General Assembly, which is, alas, virtual rather than in Vienna. It may not be obvious, and our contributions are spread across different sessions. But in the end, we follow the solar energy as it passes through the Earth system, seeking simple, physics-based explanations to simple phenomena: precipitation scaling with temperature found in observations, the diurnal temperature range across regions and vegetation types, also in observations, limits to offshore wind energy in the North sea and what these imply for renewable energy scenarios, and how the really low efficiency of photosynthesis fits to the notion of vegetation being optimal.

Continue reading “#vEGU21 Next week we’ll present our work on precipitation scaling, diurnal temperature range, offshore wind, and limits to vegetation productivity based on our thermodynamic Earth system view” →

Why does wind energy become less efficient when used at larger scales? Basic physics explains this effect, starting with a very limited ability of the atmosphere to generate wind energy from radiation, as described in my new review just published.

~ Axel Kleidon ~ Leave a comment

Wind energy plays an important role in the transition to a carbon-neutral, sustainable energy system and is rapidly expanding. So it is a good time to ask how much wind energy there actually is, whether we get close to the limits anytime soon, and why the efficiency of wind energy must decline when used at larger scales. These are basic science questions: How, and why, does the atmosphere actually generate motion, how much does it generate, and how much of it can at most be used? These questions I address in a review paper just published in which I show that it does not take much physics to answer these.

Continue reading “Why does wind energy become less efficient when used at larger scales? Basic physics explains this effect, starting with a very limited ability of the atmosphere to generate wind energy from radiation, as described in my new review just published.” →

How close is German wind energy use to its limit? A quick check using climate data shows that it currently represents a few percent of the maximum, but may get quite close to its limits by 2050.

~ Axel Kleidon ~ 1 Comment

From time to time I get e-mails asking me about what our work on wind energy limits implies for the German transition to sustainable energy. With the substantial expansion of wind power in Germany over the last decade, are we getting close to the limits of wind energy that the atmosphere can provide? I looked at the latest ERA-5 weather data product to get answers, and instead of just e-mailing answers, I wrote this blogpost as well to share the insights.

Continue reading “How close is German wind energy use to its limit? A quick check using climate data shows that it currently represents a few percent of the maximum, but may get quite close to its limits by 2050.” →

AGU Fall Meeting 2020: A brief summary of our contributions and takeways

~ jminz ~ Leave a comment

Corona has impeded everything in 2020 including researchers’ involvement in scientific conferences. However, innovation and the internet made it possible to contribute to large and much anticipated conferences like the AGU Fall Meeting ‘20. Thus, 2 of our PhD researchers, Annu Panwar and Jonathan Minz, presented their scientific results, keeping the spirit of science communication alive, despite tough times.

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More wind turbines should lead to less wind and less efficient wind turbines, but how to account for this? We showed that our simple spreadsheet KEBA model is about as good as complex WRF simulations to describe this effect.

~ Axel Kleidon ~ Leave a comment

Wind energy has seen a tremendous increase over the last decades, a trend that is likely to continue into the future with the transition towards a sustainable energy system. Yet, each wind turbine removes energy from the atmosphere, so the more wind turbines there are within a region, the more wind speeds should decline, making each turbine less efficient. This effect has clearly been shown by atmospheric simulation models (e.g., in our previous work), but this effect has typically not been accounted for in regional to continental wind energy resource estimates and energy scenarios for the future. The effect sounds complicated, so what should be done?

Continue reading “More wind turbines should lead to less wind and less efficient wind turbines, but how to account for this? We showed that our simple spreadsheet KEBA model is about as good as complex WRF simulations to describe this effect.” →