Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

 

Modeling the Impact of Energy Infrastructure on the Atmospheric Boundary Layer Public Deposited

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/qz20sv02j
Abstract
  • Natural gas and wind energy collectively fuel over 45% of power that goes into the U.S. electricity grid today, and their importance is only expect to grow in the coming decades. In order to mitigate climate change and damage to public health, a number of issues remain that must be addressed by these industries. This thesis advances our understanding of two key issues in the evolving energy sector through numerical modeling of natural gas and offshore wind infrastructure. The natural gas supply chain emits gases that are carcinogenic and have a stronger warming potential than CO2. I use large-eddy simulation (LES) to enhance our understanding of trace gas plume behavior, thereby improving our ability to interpret measurements of emissions from infrastructure. I build confidence in LES for natural gas applications by statistically evaluating simulated concentrations relative to observations from a field campaign. I find that LES accurately simulates plume behavior under strongly convective conditions, but its accuracy degrades when forced by stronger winds and weaker surface heating. Using these results, I begin to characterize the impact of turbulence on emission estimation uncertainty from ground and aircraft instruments. During the planning stages of a new wind farm, the wind industry faces a great deal of uncertainty regarding the anticipated wind resource. While measurements of hub-height winds can help mitigate uncertainty for land-based turbines, they can be prohibitively difficult to gather in offshore environments. I use numerical weather prediction (NWP) modeling to advance our understanding of offshore wind resource in the periods before and after a wind farm is built. By conducting a twenty-year simulation off the coast of California, I document how and why current pre-construction NWP simulations predict different winds than the state-of-the-art assessment from 2013. In a separate study, I model wind speed deficits and power losses due to wind farm wakes in the Atlantic, and I characterize the wake model sensitivity to the choice in turbulence model.

Creator
Date Issued
  • 2022-03-31
Academic Affiliation
Advisor
Committee Member
Degree Grantor
Commencement Year
Subject
Publisher
Last Modified
  • 2022-07-08
Resource Type
Rights Statement
Language

Relationships

Items