An on-site measurement coupled CFD based approach for wind resource assessment over complex terrains

Wind resource assessment, especially for regions with complex terrain, is one of the most essential topics for wind energy development. In this paper, a novel method based on on-site measurement coupled to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations is proposed to reproduce the spatial variability of wind speed distribution over the region with complex terrain. The on-site measurement data of wind speeds are adopted in the data fusion for wind speed distribution estimation and reproduction, combined with the simulation results of CFD. Next, a case study on wind resource assessment for a wind farm in complex terrain, located in Hebei Province, China was done. One year wind measurements with anemometers on three different sites were performed adopting the proposed approach. A cross-validation of the results of the proposed method against on-site wind speed measurement data indicates a good agreement. The results show that the approach proposed have reproduced a wind resource map with high resolution and the wind speed estimations for one spot within the wind farm are with a root-mean-square error of 0.399 m/s, which is qualified for wind farm planning in complex terrain.