Abstract
Climate data can be used in simulations to estimate the output of wind turbines in locations where meteorological observations are not available. We perform the most comprehensive evaluation of the NCEP CFSR reanalysis model hourly wind speed hindcasts to date, and the first for the UK, by correlating the data against 264 onshore and 12 offshore synoptic weather stations, over a period of 30 years. The correlation of CFSR data to in situ measurements is similar to alternative approaches used in other studies both onshore and offshore. We investigate the impact of the topography, land use and mean wind speed on the onshore locations for the first time. The analysis of these spatial factors shows that CFSR represents the variety of terrain over UK well, and that the worst correlated sites are those at the highest elevations.
Highlights
The results described in Winterfeldt et al [35] support this assertion as they find a low Root Means Square Error (RMSE) for offshore wind, despite using a reanalysis provided at a coarse spatial resolution (~200 km2) and having to apply temporal downscaling (6 h À1 h)
The comparison of results to those in published studies has shown that CFSR is as accurate as any other raw reanalysis dataset for the UK, challenging the finding by Ref. [20] that MERRA hourly wind speeds are more accurate than CFSR
This paper has shown that CFSR wind speed estimates are well correlated to both onshore and offshore in situ measurements
Summary
Medium-term European Union (EU) energy policy requires 20% of primary energy to be supplied by renewables and a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 (an agreement colloquially known as EU 202020). Wind capacity increased onshore by 1.6 GWe7 GW and offshore by 41%e3.5 GW in the same period [2]. The spread of values, steadily increasing in magnitude, demonstrates that beyond the several years there is a great deal of uncertainty about the extent to which wind will contribute to the UK energy mix. The onshore forecasts appear low compared to the previous installed capacity, because some of the forecasts were made before this capacity was installed, which further illustrates the difficulty of predicting future capacity. According to these scenarios, the largest predicted combined capacity by 2020 may be more than 50 GW and the smallest less than 20 GW
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