A comparison of methodologies for monthly wind energy estimation

Monthly wind energy estimations obtained by means of three different methodologies are evaluated. Hourly wind and wind power production data measured at five wind farms in the Northeast of Spain within the period spanning from June 1999 to June 2003 were employed for this purpose. One of the approaches is based on the combined contribution of the hourly wind speed frequency distribution and the corresponding power production. Several alternatives to represent the empirical wind power versus wind speed relationship are considered and their impacts on the error of monthly energy estimations assessed. Two more approaches derive monthly energy estimates directly from monthly wind values: one uses the theoretical power curve to obtain interpolated monthly wind power production values and the other consists in a simple linear regression between the observed wind speed and wind power monthly pairs, which serves as an approximation to the global power curve. The three methodologies reproduce reliably the total monthly wind energy. Results also reveal that linearity is a reasonable assumption for the relation between wind speed and power production at monthly timescales. This approach involves a simplification with respect to other standard procedures that require finer temporal resolution data. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.