Melinda Marquis

Offshore Wind Grid Integration Lead, NREL
As NREL’s Offshore Wind Grid Integration Lead, I work to identify ways that offshore wind can enable and shape the transformation of the current power system to one that is sustainable, low-cost and reliable. This involves evaluating coastal interconnection capacity, cost characterization, regional transmission expansion requirements, assessments of the impacts and value of offshore wind to the grid, power system production costs, characterization of resource adequacy contributions, system reliability and resilience. Prior to this, I worked at NOAA in two capacities. I served as Deputy Chief for the Assimilation and Verification Innovation Division, Global Systems Labs, which develops advanced observational data assimilation techniques to improve the initial state of weather models, as well as verification applications for model and assimilation research and development, and for observation sensitivity experiments. Prior to that, I was the Program Manager for the Atmospheric Science for Renewable Energy program, which improved weather forecasts by the National Weather Service for wind-turbine-height winds and surface solar irradiance. The program improved forecasts from the 3-km High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR), the only hourly updating model that can predict individual thunderstorms, and the 13-km Rapid Refresh (RAP), NOAA’s North American hourly-updating model system that ingests data from a network of ground and satellite-based sensors, radar, and aircraft. Prior to this, I was Deputy Director of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group 1, which prepared the Fourth Assessment Report: Physical Science Basis (2007).