Lori A. Burkhart is Fortnightly’s managing editor.
The search for the ultimate wind forecasting model got a boost at the end of 2008 when DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) began collaborating with a Portuguese research institute, INESC Porto (Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering of Porto) to develop a new platform for making such predictions.
The increasing reliance by the United States on renewable energy, especially variable wind, is giving the power industry a new set of hurdles to overcome.
It makes sense for the DOE to turn to Europe, which meets about 4.2 percent of EU electricity demand via wind. The ANL project is led by Vladimiro Miranda, PhD, a full professor at the University of Porto, Portugal, and also one of the directors of INESC Porto since 2000. He is an IEEE Fellow and author of more than 200 publications.