Fundamentals of Wind Resource Assessment

Fundamentals of Wind Resource Assessment

Søren Gjerding

The wind energy technology has indeed become mature and wind energy projects are becoming commercially attractive in still more parts of the world. Further, the size of wind energy projects is increasing, and hence the project investment is increasing as well. Therefore, a very reasonable requirement by financing institutions and other investors, is feasibility studies including a reliable forecast of the energy production by the projects. Further to the good estimates, there is also a need to optimise the energy yield of a certain investment in order to maximise profitability and/or attract capital.

One of the most important parts of a feasibility study is, thus, the wind study and the degree of certainty of the estimates presented. This, in turn, makes demands to the quality of wind data, i.e. the data base of climate statistics to be used in the estimate calculations. In order to provide for optimal output of a wind measurement programme, to secure the reliability of data, and to limit the uncertainties of the estimates, planning and documentation are the key elements in addition to knowledge and experience.