Wind farm capacity factor estimation using an increasing level of wind resource assessment tools

M.LAURA MAYOL; ALEJANDRO D. OTERO; GONZALO P. NAVARRO; A. CELESTE SAULO

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; 2nd Latin American SDEWES Conference 2020 Buenos Aires; 2020

SDEWES (International Centre for Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

Based on the high capacity factor reported in the press for the Manantiales Behr windfarm, in this work the capabilities of different open source tools for the wind resourceevaluation are analyzed. In the first part, the advantages and disadvantages ofreanalysis are discussed as a fast evaluation but low spatial resolution tool. This datais then used as an input for the WRF mesoscale model in order to achieve a higherspatial and temporal resolution and therefore a better evaluation of the resource. Inorder to consider the wake impact in the capacity factor calculation, the CFDOpenFOAM simulation software is used. The results achieved for this wind farmshow that each of these tools adds an additional value, describing with more detailsthe important variables for the wind farm power production estimation.