Scientific Breakthroughs on Optimal Placement of Solar and Wind Installations

There is wide disagreement about the resource adequacy of wind and solar energy for power production.  A study was done to determine the weather characteristics of pre-dominant wind and solar energy production over a large geographic domain.  The study used three years of a state-of-the-art weather assimilation system (the Rapid Update Cycle model running at 13 km resolution) and satellite data to determine the availability of wind and solar energy over the 48 US states and adjacent waters.  The weather data was collected for hourly periods, with geographic information used to realistically limit sites for wind turbines and solar plants.  The US electricity demand was estimated by the use of load profiles from the year 2006, grown by 1.1% per year to 2030, and augmented by estimates of the energy required for 90% of the light duty vehicle fleet.  This load was used to optimize the cost of a wind and solar power production system using a CPLEX minimization over the domain.  The calculation assumed that when wind and solar power production was inadequate, gas power would be used. The results show that three wind and solar domains could supply 85% of US electric demand in 2030.  The three domains are high plains wind, southern desert solar, and offshore east coast wind.  The implicit assumption for such a national energy production system is a major upgrade to the US electric transmission system.