Integration of CFD and Meteorological Modelling Techniques for use in Wind Resource Assessment

This research will be carried out first by selecting a number of sites (both on- and off-shore) for which there are quality observational or wind park production data. For these sites, meteorological models will be run in the past at relatively fine resol utions (on the order 500m) for select time periods. Once this has been achieved, the main work will be to study the strengths and weaknesses of the meteorological model data with respect to the observations on different timescales, and then to examine th e different ways in which the meaningful information from the models could be used to guide and scale CFD modelling of the flow at the sites for finer scales. Among these methods might be the exploration of case-by-case direct dynamical coupling betwee n the CFD and meteorological models, and later statistical weighting of the case-wise results to achieve long-term maps of wind resource. Further applications may include the running of a catalogue of sector-wise, steady-state CFD simulations for each si te and the scaling of these simulations based upon 'virtual climatologies' derived from the meteorological models. This second approach might also utilize indications of boundary layer height, temperature stratification and upper-level winds derived from the meteorological models in setting up and initializing the catalogue of CFD simulations for the site. The different methods will be validated against the observation-data from the sites on different timescales, and comparisons will also be made betwee n the sites studied to evaluate the reproducibility of the methods used for sites with different terrain complexities and climate regimes.