Patent ID: 10120964

Abstract:
A method of modeling the spatial variation in wind resource at a prospective wind farm site. The method involves a simplified analysis of the Navier-Stokes equation and utilizes data from all of the met sites simultaneously to develop site-calibrated models. The model coefficients, mUW and mDW, describe the sensitivity of the wind speed to changes in the upwind and downwind terrain exposure and are defined for downhill and uphill flow. The coefficients are a function of terrain complexity and, since terrain complexity can change across an area, the estimates are performed in a stepwise fashion where a path of nodes with a gradual change in complexity is found between each pair of sites. Also, coefficients are defined for each wind direction sector and estimates are performed on a sectorwise basis. The site-calibrated models are created by cross-predicting between each pair of met sites and, through a self-learning technique, the model coefficients that yield the minimum met cross-prediction error are found.