Wind Resource Assessment - Atmospheric Simulation Modeling

Atmospheric Simulation Modeling

Wind flow modeling methods, described in the following section, named 'Wind flow modeling', provide insights into very high-resolution wind flow behavior, often, at horizontal resolution finer than 100-m. Because of such finest resolution computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling application, the typical model domains used by these small-scale models have a few kilometers in the horizontal direction and several hundred meters in the vertical direction. The above mentioned model domain limitations by small-scale CFD models, need to be addressed and are often addressed by atmospheric CFD models, that could cover horizontal model domains on the order of 100's of kilometers and vertical domain depths of 10's of kilometers. In other words, any atmospheric processes that occur within such large-scale atmospheric model domains, that will influence site-specific wind and its temporal variation should be captured for successful wind resource assessment. This class of atmospheric CFD models and their contribution has not been fully explored and adopted yet, although the aforementioned atmospheric influences captured by such models are highly relevant and critical for the overall wind resource assessment efforts. There are a few such atmospheric CFD models being applied for wind resource assessments today. One such atmospheric simulation modeling approach has been described at www.wind-energy-assessment.com.