Even the Gotthard Pass provides wind power. | Image: Keystone / Mario Modena

“Wind power in the Alps could close the winter electricity gap”, says Michael Lehning, an atmospheric physicist at EPFL. But complex wind conditions in the mountains make it difficult to situate wind power plants in the optimal place. There are five neighbouring plants on the Gotthard, for example, and they all produce different amounts of electricity. A pilot study at EPFL has now shown that artificial intelligence can help make more accurate maps of local wind flows. In order to train the AI, the research team combined data from ground-based wind gauges with short-term radar measurements at higher altitudes.

F. Kristianti et al.: Combining Weather Station Data and Short-Term LiDAR Deployment to Estimate Wind Energy Potential with Machine Learning: A Case Study from the Swiss Alps. Boundary-Layer Meteorology (2023)