Climate Change Impact on Yield-Relevant Parameters and Annual Energy Production
The question of how climate change will affect the energy yield of wind farms during their operating period has been increasingly raised at conferences and industry meetings. However, when determining wind potential, wind data from the past is generally used to determine the average wind and energy yield conditions to be expected during the future operating period of the planned wind farm. This is done under the assumption that the wind conditions of the past will also exist in the future. To consider climate change, GEO-NET studies its impact on the yield-relevant quantities and thus estimates the future yield of wind farms using various climate scenarios. The estimation is based on the coupling of an ensemble of regional climate projections from the CORDEX initiative for various representative concentration pathway scenarios with the computational fluid dynamics model FITNAH-3D. Exemplary results of the applied method are given, and their significance is discussed.
By Simone Pfau, GEO-NET Umweltconsulting, Germany
