New grant fuels research on energy–water resilience

Irene Cionni, a senior research scholar in Boise State's Department of Geosciences, has been awarded a seed grant from I-CREWS (Idaho Community-engaged Resilience for Energy-Water Systems), a National Science Foundation EPSCoR program. The seed grant enables her to advance studies on compound energy drought - a weather phenomenon that poses significant challenges to Idaho's energy-water systems.

Irene Cionni, Ph.D., Senior Research Scholar in Boise State's Department of Geosciences

Dunkelflauten: a German phrase for an Idaho energy challenge

Compound energy drought occurs when multiple renewable energy sources experience simultaneous drops in generation. Imagine a week in early December with dark, cloudy and windless days, following a year of drought with little to no rain or snowfall. The result? Energy shortages from a variety of sources.

In Germany, they call these events "dunkelflauten," or "dark doldrums." Over the last decade, dunkelflauten have been documented with increasing frequency, especially in the northern hemisphere. The Pacific Northwest's 2023-24 concurrent drought and heat waves stand as a recent example.

Dunkelflauten present significant challenges for systems that rely heavily on renewable energy sources, like those in Idaho. In 2024, 69% of Idaho's total in-state generated energy came from renewable resources, namely hydropower, making Idaho the fifth-highest state in terms of renewable-energy shares of electricity. Understanding how dunkelflauten form and the effects they have on energy systems could help energy management systems anticipate and meet these challenges more efficiently. This is the task Cionni and her team have undertaken.

Characterizing complicated energy events

Cionni brings 15 years of experience in global and regional climate modeling and atmospheric-chemistry research with leadership roles at the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and Sustainable Economic Development, and extensive collaborations with the United States' National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

To investigate dunkelflauten from a variety of earth science and energy policy angles, Cionni leads a multidisciplinary team from Boise State. Co-investigators include geoscience professor Alejandro Flores and associate professor Stephanie Lenhart from the School of Public Service and Energy Policy Institute. Their respective knowledge bases in hydrology and the power grid/environmental governance, combined with Cionni's specialization in atmospheric dynamics, allow them to fully characterize compound energy drought events and their effects on Idaho's current power systems.

The team's research process includes exploring a variety of data, model sets and simulations related to the frequency, intensity and duration of dunkelflauten in Idaho. They create and use cutting-edge machine-learning algorithms to analyze atmospheric data from NCAR models. This process allows them to identify weather regimes - large-scale, recurring circulation patterns - that contribute to dunkelflauten.

Weather regime characterization and associated near-surface wind anomalies over the Northwestern United States during the historical period (2000-2009) The top panels show four dominant cold-season large-scale circulation patterns (weather regimes) identified from CESM2-LE geopotential height anomalies. The bottom panels display the associated 100-m wind speed anomalies

Focusing on recurring Pacific Northwest weather structures, Cionni analyzes weather research forecasting models to fine-tune large-scale climate information. For evaluation and validation, she also reviews climate simulations with ERA5, a global reanalysis dataset produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

Implications for energy management

When combined with existing data on regional system capacities for wind and solar, Cionni and her team hope to create new models that can surpass current weather forecasting abilities - for example, increased prediction reliability over longer time spans - and inform current energy management systems. Such information could increase the capacity and efficiency of Pacific Northwest energy-water systems, a potential win for energy management systems and residents.

"I never think of my research as something that needs to stay in a paper or a laboratory," Cionni said. "My approach with this science is to do something that can support society, improve the life and well-being of people."

This publication was made possible by the NSF Idaho EPSCoR Program and by the National Science Foundation under award number OIA-2242769.

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