Protege Bret Harper researches climate effects on wind energy

"By examining links between ENSO and average wind speed over key areas, we can better understand the effects of climate on wind energy production, and evaluate optimal energy options," he explains. Bret Harper spent his SOARS summer analyzing wind data to understand better how climate can affect wind energy production. Working with Bob Harris at NCAR’s Institute for the Study of Society and the Environment (ISSE), Bret explored the correlation between the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and winds in the Northern Plains. “By examining links between ENSO and average wind speed over key areas, we can better understand the effects of climate on wind energy production, and evaluate optimal energy options,” he explains.

Bret Harper first became intrigued by the power of the wind and the ocean during his high school years in Honolulu, where he spent a lot of time surfing. Today, he is passionate about alternative energy, and about ocean energy in particular. “There’s so much power and potential in the ocean, and it doesn’t have a lot of the disadvantages that terrestrial forms of renewable energy might have,” he says.

Bret’s interest in alternative energy sources led him to NCAR’s Institute for the Study of Society and the Environment (ISSE) and to Bob Harriss, an ISSE scientist who served as his science research mentor. As a second-year SOARS protégé, Bret analyzed historical records of wind data to explore the correlation between the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and winds in the Northern Plains. The results suggested a clear El Niño/La Niña influence on the probability of lulls in wind speeds, which are important to the wind energy industry because during lulls no energy can be produced. (view a pdf of Bret’s abstract in EWSS for more information.)  

Bret came to SOARS following his junior year in the environmental engineering program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He explains that, initially, three engineering disciplines—aerospace, environmental, and electrical—attracted his interest, but he ultimately chose environmental engineering because it was a smaller department and because the projects had, in his view, a larger purpose. “It wasn’t just about making money. They seemed to have a focus on helping the world we live in, and I liked that,” he says.

Bret, whose Native American heritage includes Coast Miwok and Pomo, has been very involved in the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), and it was at an AISES conference that he first found out about SOARS. During his first SOARS summer, in 2004, he analyzed drift velocities in the upper atmosphere. He explains that the experience taught him a lot about doing research, from developing a research question to figuring out how to address it, to celebrating bringing a project to completion. “After you’re done with that final talk and you’ve fielded questions from top scientists on a topic you really knew nothing about ten weeks ago, you realize how much you’ve learned. It’s such an experience coming to the end of summer and looking back at what you’ve accomplished.”

This fall, Bret began graduate studies in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California Berkeley, a program he found out about through his SOARS science research mentor. “It’s possible that my thesis work will build off my summer research,” says Bret. He plans to complete a master’s degree in energy and resources, and he hopes to have the opportunity to learn more about ocean energy as well. “If I’m not able to address that as part of my master’s work, I think I’d like to get a PhD in the ocean energy field and become one of the real experts in that area, especially as it’s just emerging now,” he says