Mountain waves can impact wind power generation

Draxl, Caroline; Worsnop, Rochelle P.; Xia, Geng; Pichugina, Yelena; Chand, Duli; Lundquist, Julie K.; Sharp, Justin; Wedam, Garrett; Wilczak, James M.; Berg, Larry K.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-45-2021

Articles | Volume 6, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-45-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-45-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 6, issue 1

Research article

|

07 Jan 2021

Research article |

| 07 Jan 2021

Mountain waves can impact wind power generation

Caroline Draxl, Rochelle P. Worsnop, Geng Xia, Yelena Pichugina, Duli Chand, Julie K. Lundquist, Justin Sharp, Garrett Wedam, James M. Wilczak, and Larry K. Berg

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Final revised paper (published on 07 Jan 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 25 May 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 04 Jun 2020
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 Jul 2020
AC1: 'Response to reviewers' comments', Caroline Draxl, 24 Aug 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Caroline Draxl on behalf of the Authors (25 Aug 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (20 Sep 2020) by Andrea Hahmann

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (29 Sep 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of the revised manuscript wes-2020-77

Mountain waves impact wind power generation

Summary
The authors have substantially revised the manuscript and provided significant answers to the raised concerns by the 2 reviewers. I recommend to accept this paper for publication after minor revisions.

Remaining remarks

1. Abstract: the abstract mentions several times the wave speed. Please make clear whether you mean phase speed or group velocity.

2. Ln 32: WRF: the acronym WRF was not introduced yet (but of course I understand what you mean).

3. My previous remark labeled as “Ln 18” about large mountains, i.e. what is meant by “large” and a recommendation to add some words about the scales you intend to discuss. The authors now refer in the response to another paper that they cited and in that one a second paper is cited and the reader has to obtain the information in this indirect way. This will not work in practise so I still recommend to add some words about this directly.

4. Concerning the introduction of the report by Haupt et al: I agree this is a good reference, but again as a reader I do not want to be redirected to another source when I want to know the basic advantages of the set up advocated in Haupt et al. At the same time I do not ask for a complete review of WRF settings, just some justification/illustration what were the key ingredients to success in the current set up (i.e. MYNN, the height of the lowest grid point, ...). So some words like MYNN outperformed the other PBL schemes with a MAE of xxx m/s while for the other we found yyy m/s. Or MYNN was especially better for stable stratification compared to non-local schemes...

5. Ln 49-51: here the text mainly addresses vertically propagating waves, while the abstract mainly discusses waves that propagate downwind. This might create some confusion to get the reader on the right track.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (09 Oct 2020)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (25 Oct 2020) by Andrea Hahmann

AR by Caroline Draxl on behalf of the Authors (27 Oct 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (05 Nov 2020) by Andrea Hahmann

ED: Publish as is (05 Nov 2020) by Jakob Mann (Chief editor)

AR by Caroline Draxl on behalf of the Authors (16 Nov 2020) Manuscript

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Short summary

Mountain waves can create oscillations in low-level wind speeds and subsequently in the power output of wind plants. We document such oscillations by analyzing sodar and lidar observations, nacelle wind speeds, power observations, and Weather Research and Forecasting model simulations. This research describes how mountain waves form in the Columbia River basin and affect wind energy production and their impact on operational forecasting, wind plant layout, and integration of power into the grid.