Abstracted/indexed

Wind park planning and power system design require robust wind resource information. While most assessments are restricted to the last four decades, we use centennial reanalyses to study wind energy generation variability in Germany. We find that statistically significant multi-decadal variability exists. These long-term effects must be considered when planning future highly renewable power systems. Otherwise, there is a risk of inefficient system design and ill-informed investments.

Airborne wind energy systems aim to operate at altitudes above conventional wind turbines where reliable high resolution wind data is scarce. Wind measurements and computational simulations both have their advantages and disadvantages when assessing the wind resource at such heights. This article estimates optimal operating altitudes and investigates whether assimilating measurements into the model generates a more accurate wind data set at heights up to 1100 m.

UAS systems provide in-situ measurements of turbulence and wind conditions. In the presented paper the tip vortex generated by wind energy converters is measured. The extent of these vortices is crucial to set up a simulation grid for numerical simulations, otherwise these vortices can not be identified. A method is presented to evaluate UAS measurements to identify tip vortices of wind energy converters. The results are comparable to expectations from literature.