Abstract
In this study the performance of the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model in a complex and coastal terrain has been evaluated with focus on wind resource assessment. The study area is a small community on the northern part of the island Senja, Norway. The community, with fishery and seafood as its main industry, is being limited by poor grid connection. One of the solutions is to increase the production of local power from wind energy. There are no in-situ wind measurements in the area, and therefore numerical weather prediction models, namely the WRF model, is being evaluated as a method for wind resource assessment. The WRF model has been run for the whole of 2017 with high resolution covering an area large enough to include the three closest weather stations. The model is compared to the observed wind speed and direction. It is found that the model is able to reproduce the average wind speed and wind direction quite well for two of the locations, while for the third location the average wind speed is considerably overestimated compared to the observations. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) found are larger than in other comparable studies.
Highlights
The aim of this study is to evaluate how well the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is able to reproduce the wind speed and the wind direction in a specific area in Northern Norway characterized by a complex and coastal terrain
A full year of WRF simulation results have been compared to in-situ wind observations retrieved from three weather stations provided by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (MET)
The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of the WRF model in a complex and coastal terrain with respect to wind speed and direction
Summary
The aim of this study is to evaluate how well the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is able to reproduce the wind speed and the wind direction in a specific area in Northern Norway characterized by a complex and coastal terrain. The area of interest is a small community with a population of about 5000, located on the northern part of the island Senja, Norway. The main industry is fishery and seafood production. To be able to keep competing on a global market, the industry is currently facing large changes in terms of a more efficient and automated production line. The grid capacity and the quality of the power supply have become limiting factors for economical growth. The total power and energy load have, on several occasions, been higher than the grid capacity
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