Radar-derived precipitation climatology for wind turbine blade leading edge erosion

Letson, Frederick; Barthelmie, Rebecca J.; Pryor, Sara C.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-5-331-2020

Articles | Volume 5, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-5-331-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Wind Energy Science Conference 2019

https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-5-331-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 5, issue 1

Research article

|

06 Mar 2020

Research article |

| 06 Mar 2020

Radar-derived precipitation climatology for wind turbine blade leading edge erosion

Frederick Letson, Rebecca J. Barthelmie, and Sara C. Pryor

Data sets

NOAA’s Weather and Climate Toolkit NOAA NCEI (National Centers for Environmental Information) https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/wct/

Radar Data NOAA NCEI (National Centers for Environmental Information) https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/radar-data

The United States Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB) USGS https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/

Short summary

Wind turbine blade leading edge erosion (LEE) is potentially a significant source of energy loss and expense for wind farm operators. This study presents a novel approach to characterizing LEE potential from precipitation across the contiguous USA based on publicly available National Weather Service dual-polarization RADAR data. The approach is described in detail and illustrated using six locations distributed across parts of the USA that have substantial wind turbine deployments.