The Met Office Virtual Met Mast™, available from ADAS, is a versatile tool for assisting with the analysis, evaluation and selection of onshore and offshore UK wind farm sites. It offers clear, cost-effective and reliable site analyses to allow you to make most the informed decisions for your wind farm developments.
The Virtual Met Mast™ methodology combines advanced modelling techniques and supercomputing power with the extensive forecasting and climatological archives from the Met Office. High-resolution techniques can be used to resolve wind flows and intensities in regions with complex mountainous terrain at turbine hub height.
Primary Site Screening
The primary Virtual Met Mast™ screening tool is designed to deliver accurate information about wind resource at sites during a site screening process. This allows sites to be effectively ranked in terms of their wind resource and allows an early estimate of potential energy yield.
Complex Site Screening
Our high-resolution screening tool uses adopts a non-linear approach to modelling turbulent wind flow where linear models such as WAsP are not appropriate. The high-resolution tool permits improved modelling of complex areas of terrain to provide the most accurate analysis report possible.
Assessments available across the UK and Europe
Virtual Met Mast™ assessments are available for sites across the UK and Europe. The Virtual Met Mast™ report includes detailed wind climatology for each site, including:
Daily wind speeds at up to two pre-selected hub heights
Monthly wind speed at up to two pre-selected hub heights
Wind rose showing speed and direction
Wind speed distribution for an agreed period.
Testing has demonstrated that the Met Office Virtual Met Mast™ can provide estimates within ± 5% of long term wind monitoring data derived from existing wind farm sites. The wind resource estimates can be available within days rather than the months or even years required with a conventional met mast.
Example analyses are shown. Customised parameters are also available.
1) Monthly mean wind speed at hub height
Figure 1: Monthly Mean wind speed with 16 and 84th percentiles bars (sample data using 10 m wind speeds)
2) Wind strength and direction
Figure 2: The wind rose provides a visual representation of the wind data provided in the table. Monthly wind roses can be produced to display a month-by-month analysis.
3) Wind frequency analysis
Figure 3: Analysis of winds for all directions over plotted with a Weibull distribution (using 10 m wind sample data)
4) Maximum and minimum wind speeds
Max, min and mean wind speeds derived from forecast data can be given for defined timeframes
Table 1 shows maximum, minimum and mean wind speeds derived from typical forecast data for two different forecast time frames.
5) Wind threshold exceedence
Figure 5: Percentage of time the wind exceeds the thresholds of 6, 10 and 20 metres per second.
Conclusion
Wind resource assessment is an essential part of wind farm development for site screening, selection and to support investment proposals. The Met Office Virtual Met Mast™ service from ADAS ensures that wind farm developers have the best available information to save time and cost in assessing wind resources and developing sites.
For further information on how ADAS can assist in planning applications and suitability analysis for wind farms or wind turbines, please contact Jon Abbatt by e-mail jon.abbatt@adas.co.uk or telephone 015396 21801