In this project a New European Wind Atlas will be developed to be used as a standard for site assessment. The new Atlas, based on improved modelling competencies on atmospheric flow, together with the guidelines and best practices for the use of data, should become a key tool not only for manufacturers and developers, but also for public authorities and decision-makers, by reducing overall uncertainties in determining wind conditions.
The New European Wind Atlas will involve the development of new dynamical downscaling methodologies as well as improvements and extensions of the models involved with high temporal and spatial resolution.
The Atlas will take advantage of newly created long term datasets and incorporate comprehensive information about wind conditions for all stages of wind projects’ life-cycle.
Overall, the new Atlas will provide a unified high resolution and freely available data-set of wind energy resources in Europe. The statistics in the atlas will cover Europe with a resolution 20-30 meters in at least 10 wind turbine relevant heights. This statistical downscaling is built on at least 10 years of mesoscale simulations with a resolution of 2-3 km. These mesoscale data will be publicly available.
The area coverage is the EU countries and 100 km offshore plus the Baltic and the North Sea. In addition to wind resource information, the new Atlas will give measures of wind variability, wind power predictability from day-ahead to decadal as well as parameters for wind turbine design.