Rebecca J. Barthelmie

About

Professor Rebecca J. Barthelmie is a faculty member at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, where she joined in 2014 as a Croll Faculty Fellow. Her research is centered on wind energy resources and wind turbine wakes within and downwind of large wind farms, both onshore and offshore. She has contributed significantly to the understanding of wind farm aerodynamics, wake interactions, and boundary-layer effects, utilizing measurements, remote sensing technologies such as lidar, modeling, and data analysis of large datasets. Her work has involved the development of offshore wind farms in Denmark and extensive research on wind energy impacts in complex terrains and boundary-layer interactions in the United States. Professor Barthelmie has authored over 125 journal papers and 400 conference papers and reports, and she is co-chief editor of the journal Wind Energy. Her achievements include receiving the 2009 scientific award from the European Wind Energy Academy for her efforts in wind energy research. She leads research projects funded by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, focusing on wind energy potential, wake effects, and climate change mitigation through wind power. Her contributions have advanced the scientific understanding of wind energy systems and supported the development of sustainable energy solutions worldwide.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Geography
• Physics
• Communication

Selected publications

• Climate change impacts on wind power generation

  Nature Reviews Earth & Environment · 2020-10-20 · 341 citations

  reviewOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A global assessment of extreme wind speeds for wind energy applications

  Nature Energy · 2021-01-25 · 167 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Wind shadows impact planning of large offshore wind farms

  Applied Energy · 2024-02-02 · 38 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Overview of preparation for the American WAKE ExperimeNt (AWAKEN)

  Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy · 2024-09-01 · 23 citations

  articleOpen access

  The American WAKE ExperimeNt (AWAKEN) is a multi-institutional field campaign focused on gathering critical observations of wind farm–atmosphere interactions. These interactions are responsible for a large portion of the uncertainty in wind plant modeling tools that are used to represent wind plant performance both prior to construction and during operation and can negatively impact wind energy profitability. The AWAKEN field campaign will provide data for validation, ultimately improving modeli…

  PublisherDOI

• Power Production, Inter- and Intra-Array Wake Losses from the U.S. East Coast Offshore Wind Energy Lease Areas

  Energies · 2024-02-23 · 12 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  There is an urgent need to develop accurate predictions of power production, wake losses and array–array interactions from multi-GW offshore wind farms in order to enable developments that maximize power benefits, minimize levelized cost of energy and reduce investment uncertainty. New, climatologically representative simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model are presented and analyzed to address these research needs with a specific focus on offshore wind energy lease are…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Multiple wake interactions in large wind farms

  NSF · $135k · 2014–2016

• Quantifying wind farm power losses due to wind turbine wakes

  NSF · $90k · 2008–2010

• Collaborative Research: Perdigao: Multiscale Flow Interactions in Complex Terrain

  NSF · $367k · 2016–2020

Frequent coauthors

• S. C. Pryor

  Cornell University

  290 shared

• Sten Tronæs Frandsen

  32 shared

• Frederick Letson

  31 shared

• Søren Ejling Larsen

  31 shared

• Bernhard Lange

  Texas Instruments (United States)

  30 shared

• Kurt Schaldemose Hansen

  MAX IV Laboratory

  27 shared

• Tristan J. Shepherd

  26 shared

• Jørgen Højstrup

  24 shared

Awards & honors

• 2009 scientific award from the European Wind Energy Academy…
• Selected for Denmark 2017 Fullbright Scholar
• 2016 Affiliate Professor, Danish Technical University Wind E…
• 2016 Nominated for the NSF Presidential Awards for Excellenc…
• 2016 Invited speaker European Academy of Wind Energy Ph.D. S…

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