Type: Poster presentation
Venue: AWEA Offshore Windpower Conference 2012
Citation:
Bryan Woods; Beatty, Kyle; Nehrkorn, Thomas; (2012) A 30-Year Wind Climatology off the Coast of Delaware From High-Resolution Numerical Weather Prediction. AWEA Offshore Windpower Conference 2012, Virginia Beach, VA
Resource Link: http://ww2.aievolution.com/awe1201/index.cfm?do=ev.pubEventGridByCat&showByDay=all
As worldwide wind energy production continues to grow, developers are increasingly examining offshore areas for development. A detailed wind climatology is an integral part of any resource study. On the outer continental shelf, where observations are typically extremely sparse, numerical weather modeling provides a method to gain insight into wind energy potential. Under a contract from Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEM), and MMI Engineering, AER has conducted a two-phase modeling study to provide a 30-year near-surface wind climatology off the coast of Delaware.
In the first phase of the project, a limited number of down-scaled simulations were run and tested against observations to determine an optimal model configuration for predicting offshore winds. In the second phase, a full 30-year climatology of wind resources offshore of Delaware was generated by repeatedly sampling a limited simulation library. The full climatology was built by matching the high-resolution fields to the reanalysis at every time in the 30-year climatology and sampling from the most similar modeled time. Simulated winds were found to validate much better (differences ~2%) than reanalysis data (~25%) when compared to the available buoy observations. This complete climatology can serve as a guide for the feasibility of economical wind energy development in the region. A summary and results from the climatology will be presented.
Also presented at Fourth Conference on Weather, Climate, and the New Energy Economy:
Bryan Woods, T. Nehrkorn (2012) A 30-year wind climatology off the coast of Delaware from high-resolution numerical weather prediction. Fourth Conference on Weather, Climate, and the New Energy Economy, Austin, Texas. (Oral Presentation)