Advances in Numerical Weather Prediction Modelling to Improve Wind Resource and Wind Energy Production Assessment

Dear Colleagues,

Numerical weather prediction (NWP) models are generally a mandatory starting point to address a (pre)feasibility assessment of wind resource potential of a site to develop a wind power plant. Although representing a well-established approach addressed in the literature, their use is hampered by two crucial limitations: (i) large input data requirement and (ii) high computational cost. In the last few decades, various improvements have been accomplished, in order to cope with these limitations, including implementation of geostatistical techniques as spatial interpolation or topography correction, vertical wind speed profiling methods, optimal tuning of the setting parameters of models, and computation of turbulence-related parameters. Optimal mesoscale-to-microscale modeling coupling and more effective grid nesting also proved key to addressing this issue. First and foremost, this Special Issue will bridge the knowledge gap between NWP modelers (atmosphere physicists, meteorologists, environment experts) and wind farm developers (engineers, investors, and power utilities), who often have very different backgrounds. In detail, this Special Issue welcomes research articles bringing novel contribution to NWP models implementation that span between the two opposing stages of wind project development: (i) ex-ante analysis, i.e., (pre)feasibility wind resource assessment; (ii) ex-post analysis, i.e. model testing based on measured energy production data. A challenging new research frontier is represented by the use of NWP models for wind farm micrositing, thus accurately providing, e.g., estimation of wake effects that develop between wind turbines (WTs), turbulence-related parameters, short-term wind power forecasting, etc. High resolution implemented at the wind farm-scale and also capable of ingesting very detailed input data, they may serve as a more feasible solution than very computationally-expensive tools such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. As they are capable of finely calculating all power losses affecting a real wind farm, their net production estimations may be directly compared with measured wind energy production data. NWP applications over complex environments such as offshore, ridged, hilly, sloped locations are strongly encouraged. Is also hoped that this Special Issue will attract valuable review articles that describe the current state of the art and possibly draw future research areas that need to be addressed.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

● Models application for (pre)feasibility studies

● Smart assimilation of wind atlas data

● Developing wind potential mapping

● Mesoscale-to-microscale modeling coupling

● Geostatistical methods (e.g., spatial interpolation or topography correction)

● Vertical wind speed profiling methods

● Optimal tuning of model setting parameters

● Models application over challenging (e.g., offshore, hilly, sloped) locations

● Models application for wind farm micrositing

● Short-term wind power forecasting

● Estimation of wind turbulence parameters

● Estimation of wakes due to mutual wind turbine interactions

● Testing models accuracy based on measured energy production data

● New metrics to specifically rate models' scores for wind energy applications

Dr. Giovanni Gualtieri
Guest Editor

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• NWP models
• mesoscale-to-microscale modeling coupling
• wind potential mapping
• wind farm micrositing
• challenging locations
• geostatistical methods
• vertical wind speed profiling methods