Wind Energy Modeling over West Africa

Abstract

Wind Energy remains one of the few bright spots in renewable energy in the 21stCentury. Wind farms can provide clean, renewable energy to homes, businesses and the agricultural sector. Though Wind energy is the fastest growing component of renewable energy sources, it is highly fluctuating in time and space due to the intermittent nature of near-surface winds. Understanding of uncertainties in short-term prediction of wind energy is becoming increasingly important for a variety of issues, such as integration into an electricity supply system, local energy balancing, and management of energy resources. To overcome the shortfall of high resolution in-situ regional wind observations for wind resources assessment in West Africa, the wind conditions have been estimated utilizing the next-generation mesoscale numerical weather prediction system, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of (WRF) Model in wind prediction over two regions in West Africa. The present case study shows that the model has performed reasonably well over Dakar, Senegal. On the other hand, the model performance over Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso was unsatisfactory.