Wind Resource Assessment - Measurements

Measurements

To estimate the energy production of a wind farm, developers must first measure the wind on site. Meteorological towers equipped with anemometers, wind vanes, and sometimes temperature, pressure, and relative humidity sensors are installed. Data from these towers must be recorded for at least one year to calculate an annually representative wind speed frequency distribution.

Since onsite measurements are usually only available for a short period, data are also collected from nearby long-term reference stations (usually at airports). These data are used to adjust the onsite measured data so that the mean wind speeds are representative of a long-term period for which onsite measurements are not available. Versions of these maps can be seen and used with software applications such as windNavigator, FirstLook and Vortex.