From CSIRO Australia
New energy in search for future wind
Scientists are taking the first steps to improve estimates of long-term wind speed changes for the fast-growing wind energy sector. The research is intended to identify the risks for generators in a changing climate.
Some recent international studies have shown a decrease in wind speeds in several parts of the globe, including across Australia. However, more recent results by CSIRO show that Australia’s average wind speed is actually increasing.
Scientists at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research have analysed wind speed observations to understand the causes of variations in near-surface wind and explore long-term wind speed trends over Australia.
“We have a good picture of wind energy availability across Australia from previous CSIRO wind mapping and, with the growth of wind farms, there is an emerging need to understand how climate change can affect the wind resource,” says Dr Alberto Troccoli, lead author of the paper published in the Journal of Climate.
“Wind power production is expected to increase greatly over the coming years and the associated electricity system will be subject to variations of several hundred megawatts – depending on wind availability.
“The ability to quantify with accuracy these long-term variations is essential to the sector from an economic point of view,” he said.
The conjunction of energy and meteorology is the subject of an international conference on the Gold Coast in November – http://www.icem2011.org/index.html
Dr Troccoli said that averaged across Australia wind speeds measured at a height of 10 metres had increased by 0.69% per annum compared to a decline of 0.36% per annum for wind speeds measured at 2m height, both over the 1989-2006 period.
Accurate estimates of long-term trends of wind speed provide a useful indicator for circulation changes in the atmosphere and are invaluable for the planning and financing of sectors such as wind energy.
“The potential for increasing the efficiency of energy operations by using quality weather and climate information is therefore apparent and one of the first steps is the standardisation of wind recording stations.
” Wind observations, like other meteorological variables, are sensitive to the conditions in which they are observed – for example, where the instrumentation sits relative to topographical features, vegetation and urban developments.”
The team found that the wind speed trends over Australia are sensitive to the height of the station, with winds measured at 10m displaying an opposite and positive trend to that reported by a previous study which analysed only winds measured at 2m.
Light winds measured at 10m, a height that represents better the free atmospheric flow, tend to increase more rapidly than the average, whereas strong winds increase less rapidly than the average winds. Light and strong wind measured at a height of 2m tend to vary in line with the average winds.
“Our work shows a number of challenges with the consistency of the observations during their period of operation and between sites across Australia.
“The quality of future wind observational datasets will depend on having consistency between sites, particularly with respect to measurement procedure, maintenance of instrumentation, and detailed records of the site history,” Dr Troccoli said.
He said the work has implications for a variety of sectors beyond wind energy including building construction, coastal erosion, and evaporation rates.
The research was partly funded by a grant from the Australian Climate Change Science Program supported by the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.
Stacey says:
September 26, 2011 at 11:59 pm
Am I being stupid.
Firstly why would the average wind speed at 10 m increase by 0.69% and decrease by 0.3 % at 2m height?
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No it’s a very good question. I puzzled over this myself. One factor is going to be that the speeds at the different heights are different. One good suggestion here (unproven) is that there has been more ground level obstructions build up over time. Could be more subtle effects such as aerodynamic skin effects. Could be errors in the research. Etc…
Considering how many eagles windmills have slaughtered, when will we start seeing the end of some sub-species? I suppose it’s a noble sacrifice, to save the Earth and all. /s
Andrew says: (September 26, 2011 at 11:37 pm) “Australians in general from my expertience…. (Huh?)
need to go back to secondary school and learn some maths, logic, science, reading and writing etc….
LOL Would not trust CSIRO as far as you could through (is that “look through”?) their 2000 ton building haha
But I’m here to be taut, Andrew…
(Just a simple Aussie)
Stacey and all scientists on this blog, could it be that heat rising from the ground deflects air currents? Gliders (the planes not hang gliders) say there is a distinct difference flying over urban or city development than over forests and open ground. The air terminals differ in height.
PS. More money going to waste. There is talk the ALP/Greens are now going to do something to our superannuation funds, not sure about it, but the libs had the same idea years ago.
Australia has one of the planet’s largest wind farms, around 1000Km across I have read, and they still cannot get a constant electricity supply from it. About time to give up on wind for an industrial country my friends.
Well – waddya know – someone actually doing some research (albeit totally inconclusive) about future wind availability…
We in the UK, by contrast, simply plaster the countryside with these ‘monuments to lunacy’ (to quote the Telegraph’s Chris Booker) – never mind whether they produce any meaningful amounts of electricity – just build them anyway and everyone please keep their fingers crossed….
As i write, a nice blocking anticyclone is on its way to give the UK some much-needed late summer warmth – but, coincidentally, its going to sit its backside over Denmark and Germany, which should be interesting in terms of their wind power output…
Still – I expect they did some research on the subject…
I also thought Andrew was a bit harsh on us Aussies,but to each his own.
An interactive site on Australian windfarms, from the Australian Energy Marketing Operator (AEMO):-
http://windfarmperformance.info/
You can see today’s output from each and every windfarm, just switch the areas on/off, and compare with the consumer load.
Now I’ll have to pop off and attend my secondary school maths, logic, science, reading and writing etc…..
J.T.
Aussie commenters here have mentioned the large amount of development that has occurred over the past couple of decades (I noted the comments in the flooding threads). Any of that have an effect, ya think?
John at 1.34 am. Where is this? I haven’t heard of it. Victoria has toughened its legislation of where these wind turbines can be placed? Because of the health problems associated with people living closely to wind turbines. Mind you farmers in the Northern Tablelands where I live
were rejoicing that they would be paid from $10,000 – $30,000 a year rent to have them placed on their land. Fair enough you can’t blame them. One Victorian farmer that was featured last month on a program by the ABC I think, ‘Health problems experienced by farmers’ said that he had 15 on his land.$150,000 a year eh? How much tax would they pay on this I wonder. If you note that these wind turbines are quite close together. They don’t supply enough electricity to be worth it I feel. And generally the main grid has to take on their shortfall, that makes electricity more expensive, same has solar buy back has done, ok for those that can afford the solar panels but it places other users with the burden of the extra money paid to them.
HR – last couple of decades? I was aware that 60 wind turbines were used for a desalination plant near Sydney, and people were complaining about the noise, sounding like a jet winding up.
But that’s not over the last few decades. UK and Europe have had them, and most of the English people I have spoken to have said they are useless and bird choppers. Canada also . Not as far as I have heard in Oz. It’s a relatively new useless Green initiative. I wrote to the local press and
am known as a skeptic. But one writer replied, that I had said that wind farms are not reliable
24/7, and she wrote that I was wrong, and coal fired generators weren’t either. Well as I replied
at 3 am in the morning while I am blogging overseas, I still have electricity for my computer?
JeffT – re the wind power graphs – I particularly like the right-hand graph of the final pair of graphs showing wind output versus demand for 2010…
There it is – bumbling along the baseline….
The key phrase for me is “Accurate estimates of long-term trends of wind speed provide a useful indicator for circulation changes in the atmosphere and are invaluable for the planning and financing of sectors such as wind energy.”
How long is it prudent to wait before an estimate can be shown to be accurate, and also to show whether the trend is linear or not? I am a true sceptic over the use of linear trends for any of these forecasts of future climate, as logic dictates that at some point any “linear” trend must depart from linearity to avoid plainly absurd values for the trended variable.
If surface winds are decreasing while high level winds are increasing, that would imply less turbulence or storminess.
I’d start with this hypothesis: Recent years have shown a LOT of semi-permanent highs and lows, which means that the wind in the boundary regions is much more constant than before. This would mean less wind within the semi-permanent highs and lows, but perhaps the ‘temporal density’ of the wind in boundary zones pulls up the spatial average.
Kohl says:
September 26, 2011 at 11:15 pm
The notion of ‘average wind speed’ across an entire continent is meaningless, whatever height you choose.
Of course it is, Johanna is absolutely right. This is all particularly silly!
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Kinda makes one wonder about “average global temperature”, don’t it?
I’m sure now we will have a “team” in the US studing this. And, they will want lots of tax dollars to pay for it.
Am I being stupid.
Firstly why would the average wind speed at 10 m increase by 0.69% and decrease by 0.3 % at 2m height?
————-
No it’s a very good question. I puzzled over this myself. One factor is going to be that the speeds at the different heights are different. One good suggestion here (unproven) is that there has been more ground level obstructions build up over time. Could be more subtle effects such as aerodynamic skin effects. Could be errors in the research. Etc…
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It is clear that the 100 ppm of added CO2 has significantly altered the average viscosity of the air causing it to be ‘slipperier’ in the absence of cellulosic flora or silicate minerals. I hope to receive substantial grant money to further investigate this new phenomena of burning fossil fuels…
J2
On this topic of wind I think I’ll… uh, pass.
(Sorry! Couldn’t resist!)
Stacey says:
September 26, 2011 at 11:59 pm
Am I being stupid.
Firstly why would the average wind speed at 10 m increase by 0.69% and decrease by 0.3 % at 2m height?
It hasn’t. This is just what their magic averaging 8-ball says.
Chuck Nolan, I absolutely agree, this CSIRO experiment proves nothing. Actually there is data already there. But what has been proven is wind turbines are subject to wind strength over 24 hrs a day to make the turbines turn from the wind, and no one can calculate this it varies. And the thing is that wind turbines are driven by wind not engines. It is known if the wind valocity is too low they won’t turn, if it gets too high they are stopped from producing electricity even damaged. They are just an unproven reliable source for electricity. Do you spend millions of dollars on an uncertain and more importantly an already unproven technology?
@bushbunnyy says:
September 27, 2011 at 3:20 am
Oh dear… I wasn’t clear. I was just referring to where the wind speed measures were taken and thinking that comparing the past to the present at more developed locations might only be revealing how many buildings had been built.
I do appreciate the info on the Aussie bird dicers, though. The Brits here have talked a lot about what’s going on in their neck of the woods and Anthony has posted a lot about the Raptor-O-Matics in the US of A. Maybe (maybe? Hah!) my memory is shot and I don’t recall much on the situation in Australia. Thanks.
Stacey says: @ur momisugly September 26, 2011 at 11:59 pm
“Am I being stupid.
Firstly why would the average wind speed at 10 m increase by 0.69% and decrease by 0.3 % at 2m height?”
A shot in the dark is the increase in trees due to Australia green “no clearing policy” the year 2006 was the year of “Fire and Drought” See
“…Across Australia in 2006, fires sprang up before summer was even officially underway. An ongoing drought and high temperatures have created extremely risky conditions for fires in many parts of the country. In late November and early December, satellites captured numerous images of fires in places as far flung as northwestern Australia and Southern Queensland….” earthobservatory.nasa.gov
Also see Anthony’s “We’ve lost two people in my family because you dickheads won’t cut trees down…”
The No Clearing policy:
“…As a result of this campaign, in 1991 the State Government passed laws to protect endangered and threatened types of bushland on leasehold land. For the first time leaseholders had to get a permit to clear native bushland. However, clearing continued unchecked on privately owned land.
Environmentalists continued their campaign, this time highlighting the escalating rates of clearing on private (or freehold) land. In 1999 the State again introduced new laws — this time to prevent the clearing of endangered bushland on private land….. “ http://www.wilderness.org.au/campaigns/land-clearing/qld_landclearing
So Dr Troccoli seeing “…a decline of 0.36% per annum for wind speeds measured at 2m height…over the 1989-2006 period.” has a very reasonable explanation.
The determination of the actual changes in the landscape at each test site over the period of the study is left to Dr Troccoli or someone else who wants to try for a peer reviewed paper.
Do not forget to include the get out of jail free card. “The increase in CO2 caused…….”
Does anybody remember the derivatives contracts built around weather that Enron was developing? Wind futures to hedge wind energy cannot be far off. It may make wind energy appear more substantial, but you can bet on any activity in which mankind engages. That doesn’t mean the activity is good, just widespread.
The Climate Change jugernaut continues its travels. Eventually the entire world will be working on Climate Change research, and all the taxes will collapse the last remaining Mom-and-Pop flower shop. Then we’ll all be back to hunting and gathering and the Greens – the ones not eaten by lions, tigers and feral polar bears released from zoos, will be smiling. Until the GMO apes (“We all have the right to better brains!”) take over.
Right. Been done, sort of.
For $10 I will happily sell you details of my prediction system that will enhance your chances of winning the jackpot on your local lottery. I do not guarantee success and cannot offer a money back guarantee, but your chances of picking up those lesser prizes will also be enhanced and I am confident that you will be delighted with your purchase. What I can absolutely assure you of is that your chances of winning will not be one iota less than those of people who labour on without my help, and will be better by some way than those of Dr. Troccoli predicting future wind speeds in Australia.