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.
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I am curious about how these anemometer stations are sited. How many are at the end of airport runways? How many are in valleys or near tall buildings or other natural obstacles? Any near air conditioning outlets? Might this be another task for the WUWT team? 🙂
Lessee… per annum:
+0.69% at 10m
-0.36% at 2M
But we’re interested in long term changes, right? So over, say, a century:
+69% at 10m
-36% at 2m
Right, sounds plausible to me. Oh, wait… they actually say that over a longer term, the trend is zero.
“Our work shows a number of challenges with the consistency of the observations during their period of operation and between sites across Australia.”
I think that’s their most valuable finding, right there!
For those of us “into” wind farms… Have we seen this scheme?
http://atelierdna.com/?p=144
Best,
Frank
It seems probable that in ideal places for concentrating windmills, we will slow the wind down with the windmills and shift the ideal places to either side of the wind farm in an end run, much like tall buildings in cities increase the wind in man-made canyons. Does this make sense?
The risks of windpower are much more worthy of concern than risks too wind power. For one thing:
http://www.masterresource.org/2011/09/wind-radar-national-security/
This whole “Renewable Energy” push reminds me of Tulip Mania and the Emu Craze. Only this time it is whole countries joining in on the insanity with tax payers unwillingly footing the bill.
Gail Combs says:
September 27, 2011 at 10:49 am
“This whole “Renewable Energy” push reminds me of Tulip Mania and the Emu Craze.”
Found a video from Minnesota that has the beautiful mating call of the female Emu on its soundtrack. Turn up the subwoofer!
http://articles.latimes.com/1997/dec/16/news/mn-64567
JeffT says:
September 27, 2011 at 2:33 am
————————————————–
You can get the same UK data at the following site:
http://www.netareports.com/reports.jsp
Warning: to see the windmill contribution to the UK’s energy needs you need to enlarge the graphs quite a bit. Wind output is generally the thin pink sliver just below ‘Other’. This freely available, almost real-time, damning evidence against wind power makes me wonder how much longer this site will be on public view.
Future wind is broken — so to speak.
In order to increase wind speeds, one needs to increase pressure differences. I doubt any prediction is going to work out better than chance.
“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.”
Does he really mean this? Clarity of language is important here, as a 0.69% annual increase would eventually produce a beautiful curve very different to an implied trend line with a gradient showing an 11.73% (17 yrs x 0.69%) over the 17 year period. The language implies the former, whereas I suspect the latter is much closer to the mark.
Working on the basis of the projected increase at 10 metres and decrease at 2 metres and using a common starting speed of 30kph, by the end of the century the wind speed will be 64kph at 10 M and 20kph at 2 M a difference of 44kph, good luck to roof tilers working on a two story house.
crosspatch says:
September 27, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Future wind is broken — so to speak.
In order to increase wind speeds, one needs to increase pressure differences. I doubt any prediction is going to work out better than chance.
________________________________________________________________________
I was under the impression (at least locally) that the wind direction/speed stays “typical” until the ocean oscillations change. Then of course there is the confounding effects of la nina/el nino and the jet streams becoming more “loopy” (the Rossby Waves get deeper )…..
See Chiefio: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/of-turbulence-hadley-ferrel-cells-and-loopy-jet-streams/
Needless to say you need to look at a minimum of at least 60 years worth of data before getting anything worth writing a paper about.
I have watch the local weather closely for twenty years and the “sudden” loopyness of the jet streams recently has completely mucked up the weather forecasting in my area. The weather no longer comes from the southeast and travels to the northwest. Now it can come from any direction including the southeast depending on where the jet stream loops are currently.
(I am in NC – USA)
I’m not a big fan (pardon the pun) of wind turbines, but this stuff seems to be over complicating the issue. If I was going to put up wind turbines, I would find where the wind currently is consistent enough and of sufficient velocity to run the turbines most efficiently. And as I have to replace worn out turbines, I would continue to scout out the best locations and place the new ones there. However, this attempt to forecast wind trends looks to me to be one method the eco-lunatics/AGW one-worlders will use to put large tracts of land (and coast line) off limits because of the “predicted” optimal use for wind farms.
Australian AS1170 was what I used for the best part of a decade to design structures to withstand wind loading; based on the fastest, 3-second gust expected in a period of 50 years. The Standard provides a means of calculating wind speed at different heights above ground level, given a “description” of the surrounding terrain and the rating wind speed. The equations given by the Standard use corresponding profile coefficients to find the wind speed at a given height, given the “nominal” wind speed.
A higher terrain category means more obstruction to wind, so the profile coefficient “sharpens” the wind profile. i.e. wind speed close to the surface is very much less than at substantial height above the surface. Those coefficients have been derived (historically) from empirical measurements in conjunction with basic fluid mechanics.
Dr Troccoli and his team should read AS1170 and the documents on which it is based. If all their paper represents is a plea for more funds to research what is essentially already known, then that is par for the course of what we have come to expect of the formerly-repected but now politicized CSIRO.
The observation that winds speeds near the surface have reduced should invite those who understand Le Chatelier’s Principle to expect winds at greater height to be somewhat faster. Increased obstruction to wind near the surface will tend to force the wind to try to go around the obstruction, preferably horizontally, but if the back-pressure of doing so becomes too high, then the wind will instead lift to above the obstruction. Flow continuum requires an increase in wind speed.
Wind power has an EROEI of no more than 0.29 and is unsustainable.
Re-measure the wind to your heart’s content.
Wind power will never amount to anything but huge profits for developers, banks, brokerage houses, land owners. and politically connected manufacturers. The taxpayer, as usual, will be saddled with the bill for this colossal waste of resources.
All computer models are flawed. Unless they predict something we like.
REPLY: Speak for yourself
“REPLY: Speak for yourself”
I wasn’t pronouncing any judgements. I completely acknowledge that this bias is just as widespread among the “other side”.
Recently, there was a fake study saying that meat eaters are more egoïstic people. As a vegetarian, this is the kind of stuff I like to hear. But I was immediately skeptical and started looking for the study but couldn’t find it. A couple of days later, I read it was a hoax.
As was to be expected, many people on “my side” had jumped on the story, victoriously trumpeting it as proof of how right they were.
Not.
(By the way, what on Earth were these authors thinking?)
It happens everywhere. We’re all human. Nobody’s perfect.
Skepticism is the difficult path towards objectivity and truth.
So, what’s my point? Be skeptical with yourself. I’m skeptical with myself, too. When a computer model predicts something you don’t want to hear, you say it’s flawed. But this wind prediction is trustworthy.
I do it. too, you know. It’s very tempting.
When I see obvious errors on my side, I will also point them out. Ok, I admit, in a more subtle* way. I think that’s allowed.
* More subtle than say, getting all excited about cuts in Al Gore’s CO2-in-a-jar experiment. I mean, seriously, does that change the radiative properties of CO2? How about the cuts in Phelim McAleer’s “armed response to climategate question” video? Will you tell your readers about that? Or the nice editing of Carl Wunsch’s comments in “The Great Global Warming Swindle”?
Thanks for not blocking me. Thanks for being kind, despite the hostile environment. It’s essential. Without kindness, this life isn’t worth living.