Dr. Caroline Draxl is a Principal Technical Leader at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), where she leads, supports, and delivers projects relating to climate risk, AI, and renewables: Development of climate hazard and exposure assessment guidance, evaluating the impact of dark doldrums on power systems, advancing analysis capabilities for wind and solar energy applications, managing a transmission study that identifies high-stress operating periods under extreme events, and managing development of a chatbot to query Climate READi’s resources.
Prior to EPRI, Dr. Draxl served for more than a decade as a Senior Scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), where she led and supported atmospheric science and renewable energy modeling activities at the interface of fundamental research and industry application. Her work at NREL included wind and solar resource assessment, mesoscale and microscale atmospheric modeling, and the analysis of climate impacts on power system operations. She played a leading role in the development and maintenance of large-scale, multi-year numerical simulation datasets that have become foundational resources for wind energy research and grid integration studies (WIND Toolkit).
Dr. Draxl holds a Ph.D. in Wind Energy and Atmospheric Science from the Technical University of Denmark. She earned her M.S. in Meteorology from the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
Recent Publications
- [1]Kyle Peco, Jiali Wang, Chunyong Jung, Gökhan Sever, Lindsay Sheridan, Jeremy Feinstein, Rao Kotamarthi, Caroline Draxl, Ethan Young, Avi Purkayastha, and Andrew Kumler, 2026: „Evaluation of a High-Resolution Regional Climate Simulation for Surface and Hub-height Wind Climatology over North America“. WES, 11, 13-35, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-11-13-2026.
- [2]Lindsay M. Sheridan, Jiali Wang, Caroline Draxl, Nicola Bodini, Caleb Phillips, Dmitry Duplyakin, Heidi Tinnesand, Raj K. Rai, Julia E. Flaherty, Larry K. Berg, Chunyong Jung, Ethan Young, and Rao Kotamarthi, 2025: „Performance of wind assessment datasets in United States coastal areas“ WES, 10, 1551-1574, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-1551-2025.
- [3]Andrew Kumler, Ben Kravitz, Caroline Draxl, Laura Vimmerstedt, Brandon Benton, Julie K. Lundquist, Michael Martin, Holly Jean Buck, Hailong Wang, Christopher Lennard, Ling Tao, 2025: „Potential effects of climate change and solar radiation modification on renewable energy resources.“ Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 207, 114934, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2024.114934.
- [4]Evaluation of Sunairio High-Resolution Earth Data (SHED) and Sunairio ONE Climate Forecast Ensemble. EPRI. Palo Alto, CA. 3002036233.
- [5]C. Draxl, R. P. Worsnop, G. Xia, Y. Pichugina, D. Chand, J. K. Lundquist, J. Sharp, G. Wedam, J. M. Wilczak, and L. K. Berg, 2020: Mountain waves impact wind power generation. Wind Energ. Sci., 6, 45–60. https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-45-2021.