Internships

Aditya Trivedi ’16

This summer, I developed a web-based tool to predict wind energy generation and its potential. Using publicly available data from the National Weather Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, I created an interface that allows a user to specify a location as well as a distance from that location to search for wind farms. The program outputs a six-day forecast of wind energy generation as well as a farm-by-farm breakdown for each day. If users are interested in the potential for further wind energy generation, they can instead input a location (or click on a map) to determine how many wind turbines could be installed in a 400-square-mile area with their location at the center. The tool supports both land-based and offshore turbine locations, even though no wind farms of the latter are currently online. The tool will be deployed as a part of Climate Central’s larger media strategy to inform the public on matters of climate and energy importance. The project exposed me to the various challenges associated with using interactive media to inform the public about wind energy. Due to the heavy utilization of computer programming my project required, my summer project also piqued my interest in computer science, and led me to pursue the computer science certificate.