Scientists in the United Arab Emirates have been studying long-term variations in wind in order to determine the viability of future wind farm projects in the country.
Prof Taha Ouarda, head of the Institute Centre for Water and Environment (iWater) at the Masdar Institute for Science and Technology spoke about the project at the World Water Forum, a conference being held in Daegu and Gyeongbuk, South Korea.
The data resulting from the project has been shared publicly through the recently launched UAE Wind Atlas. Like all wind site studies, the project was meant to understand a site’s true potential to generate wind energy, however it did so over a longer than typical period of time, in order to increase accuracy.
Prof. Ouarda said:
“Some of the problems related to wind energy in the past have been that people have developed wind farms based on data that is measured or simulated for a period of two, three years”
“We are not just modelling the inter-annual variability to estimate the average pattern, we need to understand the extremes, how they change from one year to another, because that is going to have a strong impact,”
“We need to model how extremes change from one year to another and understand that changes also are a function of these climatic patterns”
Unfortunately there are also a number of factors which can affect wind patterns over time, like oscillation indices. The Southern Oscillation Index, Indian Ocean Dipole, North Atlantic Oscillation, the Mediterranean Oscillation Index, for example, all influence wind at the UAE.
Prof Ouarda commented about oscillation by saying, “The way they interact is non-linear, it is not constant in time. Sometimes they are in phase, sometimes in opposition, sometimes they make each other stronger. Sometimes they make each other weaker and all that needs to be integrated”
This particular study will be completed in the next few months, and will be most useful to the UAE in properly siting wind farm projects in the future.