Abstract
The objective of this work was to assess the accuracy of various coupled mesoscale-microscale wind flow modeling methodologies for wind energy applications. This is achieved by examining and comparing mean wind speeds from several wind flow modeling methodologies with observational measurements from several 50 m met towers distributed across the study area. At the mesoscale level, with a 5 km resolution, two scenarios are examined based on the Mesoscale Compressible Community Model (MC2) model: the Canadian Wind Energy Atlas (CWEA) scenario, which is based on standard input data, and the CWEA High Definition (CWEAHD) scenario where high resolution land cover input data is used. A downscaling of the obtained mesoscale wind climate to the microscale level is then performed, where two linear microscale models, i.e., MsMicro and the Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WAsP), are evaluated following three downscaling scenarios: CWEA-WAsP, CWEA-MsMicro and CWEAHD-MsMicro. Results show that, for the territory studied, with a modeling approach based on the MC2 and MsMicro models, also known as Wind Energy Simulation Toolkit (WEST), the use of high resolution land cover and topography data at the mesoscale level helps reduce modeling errors for both the mesoscale and microscale models, albeit only marginally. At the microscale level, results show that the MC2-WAsP modeling approach gave substantially better results than both MC2 and MsMicro modeling approaches due to tweaked meso-micro coupling.
Highlights
The creation of a wind atlas to map the geographical distribution of the wind resource potential over a territory is often the first step for the sustainable development of a wind energy sector [1].It can be used to identify the best sites for more advanced studies and to optimize economical and territorial planning.In Canada, the Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) of Environment Canada (EC) has historically had extensive experience in the development of wind flow models
It can be seen that the overall mean wind speeds are generally lower in the Canadian Wind Energy Atlas (CWEA)-Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WAsP) scenario, whereas the overall mean wind speeds are highest in the CWEA-MsMicro scenario
With a 5 km resolution, two scenarios were examined based on the MC2 model: the CWEA scenario and the CWEA High Definition (CWEAHD) scenario where, in the latter, a high resolution up-to-date land cover dataset is used
Summary
The creation of a wind atlas to map the geographical distribution of the wind resource potential over a territory is often the first step for the sustainable development of a wind energy sector [1].It can be used to identify the best sites for more advanced studies and to optimize economical and territorial planning.In Canada, the Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) of Environment Canada (EC) has historically had extensive experience in the development of wind flow models. Building from early experiences such as the Askervein Hill project [2] and wind energy resource maps [3], EC contributed a series of models and tools [4,5] that recently converged to the Wind Energy Simulation Toolkit (WEST): a methodology to achieve numerical wind atlas and resource maps ranging from the regional scale (mesoscale) to the local scale (microscale). Such a combined mesoscale-microscale modelling appears to be the best suited to assess the wind resource over a territory as underlined by Landberg et al [6]. The WEST method is based on a statistical-dynamical downscaling approach borrowed to the climatology domain [7] that integrates the Compressible Community Mesoscale
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