Mediterranean Inshore Wind Resources: Combining MCPs and CFD for Marine Resources Quantification

Abstract

This work focuses on projecting wind resources over a marine area that was shortlisted as a possible offshore wind farm site in inshore Maltese territorial waters. Wind measurements conducted over the 24 calendar month period from November 2009 to October 2011 were sourced from an 80 metre wind monitoring mast installed onshore close to the proposed offshore wind farm's location. This study uses a combination of Measure-Correlate-Predict (MCP) techniques in conjunction with commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. MCP routines were conducted between an inland reference wind measurement station possessing a long-term wind speed and direction time series and the shorter-term 80 metre wind mast's database; with the latter assuming the role of candidate site. A procedure was followed to generate a long-term wind climatology at the candidate site. This climatology was subsequently used to calibrate CFD flow modelling software to generate a wind resources map within a coastal environment of an island archipelago in the central Mediterranean region.