Wind weather data

Dear Sir/Mdm

I am trying to model wind farm in multiple locations in California, tried to download weather data through NREL and the latest available data was from 2011,Is there any sources that i can download multiple locations weather data (Latest)


Regards
Saman

Dear Saman,

I am not aware of other sources of hourly wind data suitable for use with SAM.

Best regards,
Paul.

Saman

If you refer to sam.nrel.gov/node/71040 you'll see reference to a package I've developed that will create weather files suitable for SAM. It uses NASA MERRA-2 data to create the weather files. The package sourceforge.net/projects/sensiren/files/sen_makeweather_getmerra2.exe/download includes programs to (i) download the NASA data and (ii) create the weather files. The package is open source so free for you to use. The weather "cells" for California are about 35 x 40 miles. I'm happy for you to contact me either via NREL contact or at siren@sen.asn.au

Kind regards

Angus

Hi Angus and Saman,

What wind speed and direction data is available in the NASA MERRA-2 data? Is the measurement height above the ground provided with the data?

For SAM's wind model, you should use wind speed and direction data at or near the wind turbine hub height. SAM will not run a wind simulation if the difference between the measurement height in the weather file and the turbine tower height is more than 35 meters. The SAM wind resource file format (SRW) supports wind speed and direction data at multiple measurement heights that SAM uses to estimate wind shear when the turbine height and measurement heights are different. (The wind model also requires atmospheric and dry bulb temperature data, which can be measured at any height above the ground.)

I mention all of this because Saman says he is looking for wind resource data to model "wind farms," which I take to mean a project involving large turbines with tall towers. Typical meteorological data includes wind speed and direction at 10 meters above the ground, which might be suitable to use in SAM for small turbines on short towers, but can't be used for tall towers.

You could trick SAM into using 10-meter wind data with, for example, a 60-meter turbine by changing the measurement height in the weather file to 25 meters, but results from that approach would be very approximate.

Thanks,
Paul.

Paul

I was/am aware of the height restriction within SAM. The MERRA-2 data has wind direction and wind heights at 2, 10 and 50 metres. So, it's OK for turbine heights up to around 85 metres. I have been using the MERRA-2 derived weather data with the SAM API and get good correlations between calculated (MERRA-2 / SAM) and actual (SCADA) data for a number of wind farms in "my neck of the woods" (south west Australia).

In the absence of other wind datasets this provides a starting point for wind farm analysis anywhere (well between latitudes 85N to 85S).

Kind regards

Angus

Hi Angus,

Thanks for that explanation -- that's great to know.

Best regards,
Paul.