Numerical experimental study on the potential climatic impacts of large-scale wind farms in China

Abstract

Wind energy has been rapidly developed in China during the past decades and the installed capacity has been the largest in the world. In the future, utilization of wind power is still expected to carry out in China mainly with a large-scale centralized layout. Here, we examine the potential climatic impacts of large-scale windfarms associated with deployment scale in China using numerical experiments, in which four deployment scenarios were designed. These four scenarios represented relatively small- (484 GW), medium- (2165 GW) and large-scale (3490 GW and 5412 GW) installed wind power capacities, respectively. Results showed that turbulent kinetic energy, wind velocity, and air temperature varied consistently within those windfarms with the largest changes in turbine hub heights. Moreover, the above relatively large-scale windfarms could induce regional warming with a maximum of above 0.8 °C in North China. This regional warming may be linked to an anomalous circulation pattern with a negative pressure anomaly center in Northeast China and a positive pressure anomaly center in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze-Huaihe River Basin. Keywords: Climatic impact, Large-scale windfarms, Wind energy, China, WRF model