The Consequences of Air Density Variations over Northeastern Scotland for Offshore Wind Energy Potential

Hywind-Scotland is a wind farm in Scotland that for many reasons is at the leading edge of technology and is located at a paradigmatic study area for offshore wind energy assessment. The objective of this paper is to compute the Capacity Factor ( CF ) changes and instantaneous power generation chang...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ulazia, Alain, Nafarrate, Ander, Ibarra-Berastegi, Gabriel, Sáenz, Jon, Carreno-Madinabeitia, Sheila
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:TECNALIA Research & Innovation
Repositorio:TECNALIA Publications
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:dsp.tecnalia.com:11556/744
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11556/744
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:ERA5
Air density
Offshore wind energy
FAST
Scotland
SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy
Funding Info
This work was financially supported by the Spanish Government through the MINECO project CGL2016-76561-R, (MINECO/ERDF, UE) and the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU, GIU 17/002). ERA5 hindcast data were downloaded at no cost from the Copernicus Climate Data Store. All the calculations and plots were made using R: https://www.r-project.org.
Descripción
Sumario:Hywind-Scotland is a wind farm in Scotland that for many reasons is at the leading edge of technology and is located at a paradigmatic study area for offshore wind energy assessment. The objective of this paper is to compute the Capacity Factor ( CF ) changes and instantaneous power generation changes due to seasonal and hourly fluctuations in air density. For that reason, the novel ERA5 reanalysis is used as a source of temperature, pressure, and wind speed data. Seasonal results for winter show that CF values increase by 3% due to low temperatures and denser air, with economical profit consequences of tens of thousands (US$). Hourly results show variations of 7% in air density and of 26% in power generation via FAST simulations, emphasizing the need to include air density in short-term wind energy studying.