Wied Rini II—A Five Year Wind Survey at Malta

Abstract

This paper presents detailed results from a wind monitoring assessment on the Mediterranean island of Malta. The islands depend almost entirely on imported oil for their electrical power generation infrastructure. There is increasing interest in the potential offered by renewable resources and associated technologies to supplement the electricity generation infrastructure and to meet the country's renewable energy targets. A number of sites have been identified for possible wind generation project development; including one in an area known as Wied Rini, in the vicinity of the village of Bahrija on the main island of Malta. Wind measurements conducted by the Institute for Sustainable Energy of the University of Malta have, to date amassed a number of years' worth of wind data at this location. Wind characteristics, especially those from the topmost monitoring level, are of particular importance as they are taken at a height above the ground that has not been surpassed locally until quite recently. Salient parameters such as wind speeds at two designated levels above the ground, average power density, wind speed frequency of occurrence, wind direction and other information should be useful when quantifying the potential for wind power generation in this Mediterranean Island context. A comparison with concurrent NCEP/NCAR reanalysis datasets coming from two points in the vicinity of the Maltese archipelago is also presented as a means of substantiating some of the results.