Posters

Abstract

The progression of climate change emphasizes the importance of renewable energy like wind energy. The question of the impact of climate change on the energy yield of wind farms during their operating period was increasingly raised at various conferences and industry meetings, as this is usually neglected in the preparation of wind and yield assessments. The impacts of climate change on the yield-relevant quantities and thus on the future yield of wind farms are estimated using various climate scenarios. An ensemble of regional climate projections from CORDEX is used as data basis. Within the CORDEX initiative, regional climate models are driven by global climate models, which provide forecasts for future climate changes. Site-specific changes between CORDEX-data from a reference and a future period assuming a constant bias are determined. Here, the focus lies on high-altitude wind statistics. The analysis of the high-altitude wind speed is performed for Europe and Africa, and the qualitative data is compiled in a free of charge WebGIS application. In addition to the ensemble mean, derivations between the model combinations of the CORDEX data, e.g. due to model uncertainties, are considered via an uncertainty measure based on the 15th and 85th percentiles and a significance measure for the results giving the fractions of ensemble members that agree on the projected trend.  For a more profound analysis of the impact of climate change on the energy yield, an estimation based on a coupling of CORDEX data with the CFD-model FITNAH-3D, that has been operated exclusively by GEO-NET for decades and is continuously developed to meet the requirements in the field of wind energy, can be performed. In addition to wind speed, temperature, pressure, and relative humidity are yield-relevant quantities and used for the calculation of energy yields. The change signals of the yield-relevant quantities are applied to the current yield relevant parameters to calculate modified energy yields. The presented WebGIS-application enables investigating the influence of climate change on the high-altitude wind speed. The subsequent analysis is a tool for a projection of the influence of climate change on the yield-relevant meteorological variables and thus on the energy yield of wind farms. As climate change is usually neglected in the preparation of wind and yield assessments, the method is an important contribution to industry knowledge. CORDEX data is globally available, hence this method can be used worldwide for wind energy assessments. It was found that the use of the change signal of the CORDEX data between two periods enables statements about the impact of climate change on wind energy yield relevant parameters, but climate variability as a possible cause of the analysis results cannot be ignored. Model uncertainties are described via uncertainty measures. A possible uncertainty due to inconsistent land use data in the CORDEX data is reduced considering foreseeable changes in land use and orography in FITNAH-3D.