Offshore wind energy in the Adriatic Sea: Modelling of the microscale wind field and short-term forecast of wind power potential

Studying wind energy is still a challenge. Many arguments are involved in this field such as environmental sustainability, infrastructures, economics and many others, has to find the equilibrium and coexist together for the further development of this technology. The P.O.W.E.R.E.D project, part of the IPA-PROGRAMME deal with these issues concerning the Adriatic basin. Numerical and experimental evaluation of wind energy resources is assigned to Università Politecnica delle Marche. Two maps of different spatial resolutions of one and three kilometers respectively, for one and five years are produced using the PSU/NCAR mesoscale MM5 (fifth generation) in hind-casting. The existing meteorological network data's are used as single point monitor the inter area so experimental data will be available for different uses. Further more a forecasting system will be available for the possible wind farms. For the expansion of wind energy to new markets for the Adriatic Basin poses a challenge into estimating this resource for the whole area. An accurate climatic description relies on a comprehensive regional observation network, characteristic often not available on emerging markets, and generally not extensive on established markets. In these cases the use of Mesoscale modeling can provide a large-scale analysis with regional features. Considering existing limitations, this approach can be used to support an initial ranking and selection of sites for wind farm projects. Initial large-scale conditions are obtained from the Reanalysis database, which contains global meteorological observations, covering over 30 years at 1° km spatial resolution. An initial large-scale analysis of 3 km of spatial resolution is conducted for the study of the climatology of the Adriatic region for 5 consecutive years; from 2008 to 2012 describing the average conditions in across a desired area. In a second time, a finest resolution wind map of 1 km is obtained in order to better understand the evolution of the climatology near the costs. The simulation of the regional wind climate is conducted using the Mesoscale Modeling (MM5). This modeling system calculates the dynamics and thermodynamics of the atmosphere in limited areas, and is currently developed and employed at several universities and research centers worldwide. Through the process of downscaling the Reanalysis data is used to describe the initial conditions for the desired area, allowing the MM5 to calculate in great detail the effects of local features over the large-scale conditions. In order to assess the limitations of this approach, several validation efforts are conducted over different areas, providing an overview of the benefits of this methodology for wind energy estimation. The results generated from such a method can be used to represent the wind resource distribution over an area of interest for a wind farms projects, and data points can be obtained in order to represent time-series and vertical profiles for a specific area. However, as with any numerical simulation, the limitations of this approach should be carefully considered on a case-per-case analysis, and its results should be used as an additional aid to initial studies and green-field procurement.