Whole systems assessment of current and future wind speed and energy trends in rural Peru

Abstract

Climate change poses a great threat to wind energy availability, especially to small scale, remote users who depend on it. Several studies demonstrate Earth’s warming as an ominous sign for changing wind speed variability around the world, resulting in a possible significant changes in wind energy production.This research assesses current surface level wind speed and energy availability using weather station and reanalysis datasets, and evaluates future wind speeds by analyzing global climate models (GCM) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) climate change scenarios to investigate important global warming impacts on wind speeds in a small, Andean community in Peru. El Chorro, an agricultural community of interest for WindAid, an organization that builds micro-turbines in remote communities, lies in the Andes mountains, a precarious area already affected by climate change induced droughts and high temperatures.This study demonstrates lower average wind speeds from surrounding weather stations, and more favorable energy generation from a 160W solar panel than a 500 W wind turbine. The prognostic study shows little agreement among the models regarding what change can be expected, yet the results highlight the importance of delving deeper into future scenarios to model regional and local circulations. A holistic social, economic, and political analysis expresses the unique impact of climate change on different stakeholders from micro-turbine systems as well. This research concludes with recommendations for improved prognostic wind speed and energy studies and modifications among the stakeholder interactions.