The new feed-in tariff in Britain has produced an increased level of interest in small wind farms. Good wind speed estimates are vital for the proper selection of sites but small projects cannot always afford to erect masts. To satisfy this new need, GL Garrad Hassan has developed a wind resource map of Great Britain.
Although there is much publicity and activity attached to offshore wind farms in the UK there is also renewed onshore activity on which this service is focussed. The maps use Mesoscale Compressible Community (MC2) modelling results applied to a microscale flow model in order to predict wind speeds at hub heights of 50 m and 80 m, at 100 m resolution, and are used by individual developers and larger industrial clients. This approach enables thorough consideration of the effect of terrain features on the wind regime at each location within the wind map. GL Garrad Hassan has been making wind speed resource evaluations in the UK for 25 years and these new results have been appraised by GL Garrad Hassan’s experts who analyse thousands of megawatts annually.
The Mesoscale model was run at 5 km resolution with a fixed number of climate states, defined by a global database of geostrophic weather statistics based on reanalysis hindcast data. The results have been used to initiate a linear micro-scale (local) wind flow model. This microscale flow model has been run across the entire land mass of Scotland, England and Wales. Maps at a resolution of 100 m are available electronically in various formats for specific sites, regions or Great Britain in its entirety and wind roses are available to indicate wind direction across the map. Results at the same resolution for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland will be available soon.
Based on the predicted wind regime, GL Garrad Hassan’s experts also provide energy yield estimates. A map of power density is calculated using the wind speed map and a specific turbine power curve. The estimates take account of GL Garrad Hassan’s standard assumptions on losses such as availability, electrical efficiency, turbine performance and environment. These assumptions are based on 25,000MW of wind energy analysis annually, with substantial ongoing validation against operating projects. This approach provides the best possible indicative energy output prediction.
Helping Lebanon meet 2020 renewables target
Elsewhere, GL Garrad Hassan has developed a wind map of Lebanon to support an emergent wind industry in the country, which is reported to be planning to generate 12 percent of its electricity from renewable energies in 2020.
The Lebanon wind map was produced as part of the United Nations Development Programme and Spanish Government funded Country Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Demonstration Project for the Recovery of Lebanon (CEDRO). The CEDRO project was established in 2007 to provide a renewable energy and end user energy efficiency component to complement the national power sector reform strategy in the country, as part of the government’s recovery, reconstruction and reform activities.
GL Garrad Hassan’s wind map provides information to all potential stakeholders about the available wind resource at any given location across Lebanon, and therefore the potential for wind farm development.
“We are proud to have played such a pivotal role in this project. When the remaining building blocks required for the wind industry are in place in Lebanon, we have real hope that wind energy could make a significant contribution towards the country’s 2020 target,” commented Joel Manning, wind resource expert at GL Garrad Hassan.
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