Teleconnections’ influence on wind power over Western North America

Abstract:

Energy providers are shifting their supply from fossil fuels and nuclear power to renewable sources in response to policy changes aimed at reducing pollution and anthropogenic influence on the environment. Wind energy is a notable renewable source that has been adopted by energy suppliers around the globe and is increasing in efficiency and installation, but relying on a weather-dependent source of energy has its limitations. At any scale, wind power is highly variable and decidedly difficult to predict. Furthermore, wind and solar power alone are fundamentally unable to meet energy demand at times when their resources are very low. Regardless, in 2018 the state of California passed The 100 Percent Clean Energy Act, which will shift energy supply to such sources that are heavily reliant on and affected by climate and climate change. One foreseeable issue with wind power is the occurrence of wind droughts, defined by extended periods of low wind power resources. Such occurrences could potentially be related to large-scale modes of variability in the climate system that are ‘teleconnected’ to anomalous circulations and weather on continental to global scales. Previous studies have found relationships between climate indices, such as those that characterize the El Niño Southern Oscillation, Arctic Oscillation, etc., and variables such as remote precipitation and temperature. In this study, we follow this paradigm for wind power over Western North America over the period 1979-2018. We find that wind power is not particularly sensitive to the state of different climate indices either seasonally or annually, though there are indicators that some modes of variability may be linked to anomalous wind power in certain circumstances.