On the Use of Reanalysis Data for Wind Resource Assessment

The goal of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Wind Energy Program's wind resource assessmentgroup located at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, is to improve the characterization of the wind resource in many regions of the world in support of the U.S. wind energy industry. NREL characterizes the level of the available wind resource at wind turbine hub heights(typically 30 m to 50 m above ground level) using wind power density, expressed in units of Watts per square meter. Wind power density values are frequently used to classify the wind resource level with the higher wind power classes assigned to areas with high power density values. NREL has developed a wind assessment methodology to produce wind resource maps useful for wind prospecting and windenergy project implementation. The methodology integrates information from global climatic data sets and also involves a critical meteorological analysis of the climatic data. It is in the context of the critical meteorological analysis and the automated mapping system that we plan to evaluate the usefulness of Reanalysis data for wind assessment purposes.