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Identification of reliable locations for wind power generation through a global analysis of wind droughts

Enrico G. A. Antonini, Edgar Virgüez, Sara Ashfaq, Lei Duan, Tyler H. Ruggles, and Ken Caldeira · Communications Earth & Environment 5, 103 · 2024

Key finding. Wind droughts are least limiting in the American Midwest, Australia, the Sahara, Argentina, Central Asia, and Southern Africa; across most of the world there is little evidence of strong trends in wind droughts in recent decades, and the most severe droughts in many places occurred before wind power was a substantial part of the electricity supply.

Three world maps stacked vertically, each showing land areas coloured by percentile rank. The top map shows mean wind power density in watts per square metre, with high values across the American Midwest, northern Europe, Patagonia, and parts of Central Asia. The middle map shows a seasonal variability metric, and the bottom map a weather variability metric, both coloured so that the most favourable, least variable areas appear brightest — including the Sahara, Australia, and Southern Africa.
The three properties that make a location favourable for wind power do not coincide everywhere. High mean power density (top) overlaps only partly with low seasonal variability (middle) and low weather variability (bottom); regions favourable on all three measures are the ones least exposed to wind droughts. Figure 1 from Antonini et al. (2024), Communications Earth & Environment 5, 103. Reproduced under CC BY 4.0. Resized for web display.

What question did this research address?

Electricity systems that lean heavily on wind generation are threatened less by ordinary hour-to-hour variability than by wind droughts — prolonged stretches of unusually low wind speeds that no practical amount of short-duration storage can ride through.

This paper asked where in the world wind droughts are least severe, and whether they have been getting worse as the climate changes.

What did we find?

Using weather reanalysis data, the analysis mapped the global distribution of wind droughts with an energy-deficit metric that combines how deep a drought is with how long it lasts, rather than treating low-wind hours as interchangeable.

The most favourable regions combine three properties: high mean wind power density, low seasonal variability, and limited weather-driven fluctuation. The American Midwest, Australia, the Sahara, Argentina, Central Asia, and Southern Africa satisfy all three.

Northwestern Europe is a notable exception. It has high wind power densities, but its greater weather variability produces more frequent and more prolonged wind droughts than its resource alone would suggest.

There was little evidence of strong trends in wind droughts over recent decades in most places. In many regions the most severe droughts on record occurred before wind power had substantially penetrated the electricity system.

Why does it matter?

Because wind droughts show no strong trend, historical weather records remain a usable basis for designing wind-reliant electricity systems. A system planned against several decades of observed weather is not planning against a target that has already moved.

Separating mean resource quality from drought risk changes how sites compare. A region with abundant average wind may still be a harder place to build a reliable system than a windier-on-paper alternative with steadier weather.

Citation

Enrico G. A. Antonini, Edgar Virgüez, Sara Ashfaq, Lei Duan, Tyler H. Ruggles, and Ken Caldeira (2024). Identification of reliable locations for wind power generation through a global analysis of wind droughts. Communications Earth & Environment 5, 103.

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